Season Of The Witch
by Garmonbozia
Summary: One mystery is fun. Two mysteries is even more fun. Three mysteries is hard work. Three mysteries and the unwanted attentions of a soul collector from 1974...? Maybe the Doctor has finally bitten off more than he can chew. [Rating up to a T, for deliciously creepy villainous intent.]
1. Burn The Witch

Her eyes burn, but she will not allow tears to fall. Will not give them the satisfaction. But God in heaven, it's hard. The pyre has been built around the stake. It is on the edges of her vision. The smell of cut wood is cloying, suffocating. The smell of the torches in the crowd is a prelude. She will not cry, but it's an effort that makes her tremble.

They lead her like a dog, chained around the neck. Tugging too hard, these big brawny twins. She can't remember her names. It's alright; apparently they can't remember hers either. Since they came to collect her form her cell, they have only called her witch, and a number of other things a great deal less polite. And it is in this manner, stumbling and abused, that she is brought before Jacob Borden. _Mayor_ Borden, but she'll never call him that. It's a joke, to dream that any responsibility might ever have been given in the hands of this mindless puritan, who stands over her now smug and self-satisfied. As though he were utterly irreproachable. As though his beloved God could look upon this and smile.

"Elizabeth Goode," he declares, booming for the whole crowd to hear and stop mumbling, "It is the finding of the councilmen of this village that you are guilty of practicing dark and devilish magic, and you are hereby sentenced to burn. Have you anything to say before we proceed?"

"Only that I'd rather not."

"Demon," he calls her, and spits. Nods his head at the too-rough twins. She chokes as she is dragged away from him and up the side of the pyre. The chain is removed from her neck. A rope replaces it, twice around the waist, pinning her arms to her sides.

Borden is taking a torch from a man in the crowd. In fact, he has his pick of several. Each of these clamouring villagers wants to be able to say their flame was the one to start the fire. The one to burn the witch.

Lizzie will not cry. Won't beg, won't plead, won't start praying and make a mockery of repentance now.

Borden prays. He prays loudly and with zeal. All those gathered to watch her die join in with him. They force the words into the rhythm of his steps, bringing the spark to the kindling. She won't cry. No. She won't. She just looks down at her feet. They seem so far away, bundled up in the too-long white robe. Not so white right now, with the red and orange of the firelight playing on it. Another prelude. There is, perhaps, just one little spot of salt water that falls, and soaks through to her toes.

But Lizzie won't. She won't allow herself. She's seen other women go before her, screaming, sobbing as though their tears might douse the bonfire. She never blamed them, but she won't be one of them.

Borden begins the final petitions. "For thine is the power_," _he recites, even as he takes that power into his own hands. "The glory," even as he basks in the attention of the entire village. Then, starting to lower the torch in front of him, "And the-"

"_No_!" This voice is new and unexpected. It is louder than Borden's, louder than the chanting assembly, louder than the crackling torches. Borden straightens in shock and surprise. Lizzie can't help the little noise that cracks out of her throat at the flame pulling back with him. "No," the voice repeats. Lashed to the stake, she can't see where it's coming from. But the owner of it sounds almost bored. "No, no, I'm sorry to cut in, but this just _won't_ do."

Fast, no-nonsense steps bring this stranger into the space around the pyre. Lizzie cranes, and gets just the tiniest glance at a tall man in a strange brown jacket. Then there are footsteps on her other side. Her head snaps round just in time to see what appears to be a young girl, edging along in much the same manner.

Borden, however, has not noticed her. He's gotten over his initial shock. Now his face is red and twisted as the torch-flame and he demands, "What in the name of the Almighty do you think-?"

The girl has almost reached him by now. She stretches out her arm. From beneath her sleeve, a long blue sword crosses the remaining distance between them. Once again, Borden quite abruptly stops. "Shush!" the girl tells him harshly. "Doctor am to be talking now and bad-fire-man only to be listening, right-yes?"

Whether he understands or not, Borden is quiet.

Lizzie looks on, quietly cautious, as this supposed 'doctor' presents himself. Certainly he's an odd creature to look at. His breeches are of a decidedly unseemly cut, and whatever has he got about his neck? Still, while the smell of smoke is only a vague whisper on the air, she'll hold her peace.

"Quite right, bad-fire-man," the stranger says. "I'm talking now. And if you know what's good for you, you'll be listening. Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start. When you read, you begin with ABC. When you sing, you begin with do re mi. So, do-ohn't you think that young lady up there would be much more comfortable if she were _not_ tied to a large wooden post?"

Borden finds a little composure, and a little voice to thunder out, "This woman is a witch!" A cheer from the crowd spurs him on. But it doesn't impress this new doctor. He nods along, _yeah I thought you'd say that_, but he is only waiting to speak again. "She's tied there to be burnt."

"Well," the doctor cries, "Hoo-_Re_! but at the same time, I just can't get into it. I mean, why? Why burn her? What on earth is the point?"

"It's in the Scriptures," and Borden thumps his chest as though the holy words were written upon his own heart. "_Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live_."

The stranger rolls his eyes, and waves one limp hand at the sword-wielding girl. "Jessica, tell him."

"Bible am also saying that salt not kills."

"_Shalt_, love."

"Is what said."

"You said salt, which can, occasionally and in certain quantities, kill. Especially if you're a slug. Not that I'm saying that you, Mayor Borden, are a slug, never crossed my mind."

Lizzie can no longer resist. She doesn't quite know why yet, but her resolve has suddenly snapped. First the tears start to flow freely down either cheek. Secondly she can't resist calling out, "Crossed mine!"

"_Mi_," the Doctor continues brightly, "Me, I wouldn't burn her. Wouldn't be bothered. It's messy and it pollutes the atmosphere, and it's very wrong, and future generations will study you in schoolhouses and go, 'eugh, what a lot of nonsense they killed people over back in the olden days'."

Borden is the next one to snap. All of a sudden he decides he just will not bear this anymore. This is _his_ village. This is _his_ witch. He will do whatsoever he pleases with one in order to protect the other. "Now you listen here, I don't know who you think you are or where you hail from, sir-"

The stranger steps closer, straightening the funny little strap around his neck. Sticks out a hand and says, "How rude of me. I'm the Doctor, and I hail from Gallifrey, the shining star of the seventh system and-"

The girl who came with him panics and shakes. Bizarrely, she cries out, "Cough-cough-cough!"

A flash of her distress crosses the Doctor and he adds with haste and careful words, "_It's near Ireland_. Anyway, wish I could say I was pleased to meet you, but so _fa_ you're really seeming like quite a nasty, unlikeable sort of a man. You know. The sort of man that _burns_ people."

Borden, spitting with rage, stabs one fat finger at Lizzie in accusation. She hardly notices. She's used to that feeling, lately. "She has brought death, and _demons_ to this village!"

"Not demons, actually," the Doctor counters, "but really they're unfamiliar life forms from the-"

Exasperated now, the girl groans, "_Cough_!"

"-From the land _beyond the mountains_, where you haven't explored yet, if I get my dates right. Anyway, they won't be bothering you again. I got rid of them. _So_, no harm, no foul, no need to burn anybody. Jessica, go and cut her down, please."

"Yes-does, Doctor." The girl lowers her sword and comes hopping up, log to log. Her smile is bright, and she gives a little wave with her free hand. Even if Lizzie could return it, she might not. Her eyes are on Borden. He no longer has a blade at his throat, and still has the flaming torch in his hand. "Not worries," the little voice whispers to her. "Doctor am in most total control now."

Lizzie feels the rope pull tighter at the blade is slipped beneath it. Then feels it dragged up and down as the girl starts to saw through. "You brought a blunt sword to a rescue effort?" she whispers.

"Am not being sword, is wood. Gets through, is to be giving Jessica just one minute."

Lizzie, though, isn't all that sure they have it. She doesn't like the way the crowd is starting to gather closer. Borden is lowering his arm again. After all, the only one who seems to be armed is standing right up at the stake herself. In the hush of their private conversation, Lizzie lost track of what he's even saying anymore. But it must have lacked rhetoric. It must have been unsavoury. Anyway, they haven't liked it. It's a matter of simple seconds before the men of the village push in and pile upon this stranger.

The girl behind her yelps and would rush to his defence, but her wooden sword is caught in the rope.

Lizzie sighs. It was brave of them to try. Whatever is waiting for her after this life, she'll try and be grateful to them for trying. Right now, however, she's more annoyed that they didn't try a little bit harder, and maybe bring a knife with them.

Then the Doctor emerges from the top of the pile. Pops up like a child's toy, and in his hand is a little brass candlestick with a green light on the end.

"Yes," Lizzie calls, "A magic wand is quite the best thing you could have produced right now."

"Demon!" Borden shouts, but no one is quite so willing to attack anymore.

The Doctor ignores him. Instead, he shows the device to Lizzie, "Not quite a wand. Bit better than that, actually. _La_-ter I'll explain."

The girl Jessica stops cutting and leans around the stake. Sounds dismayed and unsure, "That am being really dodgy way for getting 'la' into talkings, Doctor."

"Allow it. Go on. We're nearly finished. Allow it."

Jessica heaves a sigh and goes back to her task. The Doctor grins to himself, grabs the air, mutters a little '_Yes_!' of victory. Then straightens his face, clears his throat.

From far across the fields outside the village comes the sensation of something approaching. Not in a metaphorical sense either. It's a real, physical feeling, a pressure. Lizzie can feel the air moving, and here something barrelling towards them at speeds no horse could ever manage. Not even an enchanted one. It whoops and whistles and heaves and thunders magnificently. High up on the pyre, Lizzie sees it first, glowing at the edges from its speed, high in the air. And when it comes right up to the village square it stops dead, and hovers over the Doctor and his wand.

"We, my dear Mayor – we being the three of us, me and her and her – we're going up there." Borden is already on his knees, crossing himself, praying and crying Alleluia. "Make of that what you will," the Doctor smiles at him.

He comes bounding up the mound of wood like his young friend did. Just as the rope loosens. He tugs away the sliced pieces as the mysterious thing lowers itself, gleaming and groaning, out of the sky. It has a door, and as Lizzie can only blankly stare, this door swings open of its own accord. The Doctor holds out a cordial hand. "You look like you could use a cup of _te_."

Lizzie brings up her hand and puts it in his. He takes her, so very gently, across one step of thin air between the pyre and the thing in the sky. She stumbles, and falls a step or so ahead. Inside is warm and… and…

And it begins to move, lifting them up out of harm's way again. She glances over her shoulder to see the Doctor and the girl sitting in the doorway, legs dangling out, looking down at the perplexed and praying mass that would have slaughtered her only moments ago. There, in silhouette, the Doctor holds out his hand again. Speaking to the girl, he is not so polite. "Pay up, Apple."

"No."

"Welching on a bet, are we? I'm disappointed in you."

"Doctor not does. Doctor say him was to be getting 'do-re-mi-fa-so-la-te-do' into talkings with bad-fire-man."

"And I did."

"Doctor gets in 'do-re-mi-fa-so-la-te.'"

"Oh, for heaven's sake," he mutters. Then, holding the edge, he leans right out over the square and bellows, "Oi! And _do_-ohn't let me catch you burning any more witches ever. Or we'll be back, and really, really angry, alright?" He watches for a moment. Must get some sort of reaction, because then he sits back and puts out his hand again.

The girl takes a round biscuit with a red heart on it out of her jacket and gives it to him. The Doctor greedily, with childish joy, fills his mouth.

To give it to him, the girl had to turn her head. She saw Lizzie staring at them. Now she taps him on the shoulder and brings his attention to the same thing. Now he looks. Now his face fills with the most incredible sympathy. Quietly, he climbs to his feet and comes to her. Takes both her hands in his. "How are you feeling?"

"I…" she mumbles. Then decides to ignore his question and moves on to something easier. "This place, where we now stand, it's…"

The Doctor raises one finger to silence her. "Just a second. Jessica?"

Jessica is still looking down from the door. "Yes-what?"

"Bet you another Dodger she's going to say it."

"Am to be taking him bets, please-yes."

"Right. Now, go ahead, Elizabeth, what were you going to stay about this place where we stand?"

"It's in the sky," she breathes. Her awe lasts until she sees his face fall. "It flies, physician. Like a bird."

Jessica gets up. Closes the door. Comes to him and is silently, sullenly given one of the heart-marked biscuits. She, however, does not immediately crush into her cheeks. She holds it out to Lizzie in offering. Lizzie takes it. More out of curiosity than anything else. Where are they from, that has such strange transportation, and such rich, crumbly biscuits full of sticky red sweets?

There's a strange sort of apology in the girl's tone, and she turns her eyes to the Doctor when she says, "Right-yes. Am being in sky. Also being in timeyspace. But _also_-also, am being much much bigger on its insides."

"Don't humour me, Jessica," he grumbles.

With her free hand, she touches his arm. "Was not meaning to be making him sad."

"Let's just concentrate on the traumatized witch for now, shall we?"

[A/N – Because the Anniversary gave me back a little bit of my faith, and because the title is my favourite song, and because the Doctor would have _hated _witch trials and because of other reasons I won't go into here. Anyway, enjoy. By the way, I have absolutely _zero_ idea where this story is going. If you want it to continue, be supportive and bear with. If you don't think it's worth it, don't. Much love, Sal. (Extra big shout-out to RB – both of them – without whom this wouldn't be happening)]


	2. Lizzie's Tale

The girl has gone to brew tea. They act as though this imported delicacy were the most natural thing in the world. Then again, they're in a flying box which, now that it's been pointed out to her, Lizzie can't help but notice is very much larger than it looked from outside.

"Physician-" she begins.

"Ah. I'll stop you there." By gentle steps, he is leading her up the steps. On simple instinct, she recoils from the complexity of the machine at the centre of the cavernous room. But there are seats at the perimeter of it. Lizzie didn't know quite how weak her knees were until they are bumped against a soft edge. She sits down hard, grateful, barely listening to him. "I'm not a physician, I'm the Doctor."

"But what sort of doctor? Medicine, law, divinity?"

"Just The Doctor. Don't worry about it." No, well, it really shouldn't be the main thing occupying her thoughts. She would quite agree with that. Still, these petty little questions are easier. Lizzie reaches, as she always does in times of trial, to wind her fingers into her hair. But they tied it back in her prison cell, when they dressed her in the white robe, when they chained her neck. Rather than remember, she reaches behind and drags out the ribbon. "Ooh, ginger," he says brightly, "Like a ginger."

Lizzie could care less about the colour. She holds a hank down over her shoulder, mumbling, "And the girl, she's your daughter?"

"No. No-no-no, heavens no. No. Nothing so simple. Also no. Mostly just no."

"But what's wrong with her?"

The Doctor rears back. Looks over his shoulder, as though something much have happened. Like the girl might be standing there with an arm hanging off. Looking thoroughly perplexed, "Nothing, last time I checked. Unless the kettle's turned on her. Which is a distinct possibility, but then you wouldn't be referring to that."

"Is she feeble-minded?"

His confusion intensifies. "Quite the opposite. Too smart for her own bloody good, you ask me." She would explain herself, but the Doctor takes hold of her hands again. He crouches down level with her, looking her in the eye. "Now, I understand entirely why you don't want to talk about what just happened back at the village. But really, there are a few things I need to know."

Lizzie nods. He ought to know what he's talking about. After all, he's a physician. No, wait. He is, quite determinedly, no physician. He said so. And yet she trusts him. What he asks of her, she'll answer.

"Firstly, your name."

"Elizabeth Margaret Goode." That one was easy.

"Secondly," he adds, as the girl returns with a tray of china, "how do you take your tea?" This is more difficult. Lizzie isn't from a family that could afford India teas. She's never had much of a chance to figure out how she takes it. She flounders. "Never mind," the Doctor tells her, "we'll figure it out. And Jessica does so like to be Mother." Even as he speaks, a cup and saucer are brought wordlessly to his hand. "Thank you, dear."

After that, there are no more questions. Not until all the tea is served, and the biscuits have been passed round. They must be so very rich, with their sky-ship and their fine crystalline sugar they can dose out like brining salt. As it turns out, Lizzie likes her tea to have two of those careless spoonfuls in it. If the village zealots could see her now.

The Doctor has a seat, delicately sipping. They're all so very civilized, except that the girl sits cross-legged on the floor, humming happily.

But after a time, even this has to end. "Jessica," the Doctor says, "Something sweet for our guest. I need to ask a sour question or two." From a cupboard under the heaving central machine, she produces a white paper bag. "Oh, so that's where you're stashing those. Elizabeth, you don't know how privileged you are."

So Lizzie accepts the bag when it's offered. Pinches it open at the neck and peers inside. She removes one long, thin red string, jellyish, a little sticky. "What is it?"

"Not knows? Is being _strawberry_," Jessica says, in awe and disbelief.

"But it's not even summer."

"Is still being strawberry."

Lizzie bites off a half-inch and, while it's shaped and textured like no strawberry she's ever seen before, certainly that's how it tastes. While her tongue is delighted, while her mind struggles to match the pleasure with the strange sensation, the Doctor says, "So this nasty old burning business, then, how did that come about?"

That? That's his sour question? That's the one he thinks will be so hurtful and awkward?

Lizzie looks round, honest and clear, "They don't like witches. They think we're evil. Even when we go about healing their ills and delivering their children and granting a select few of their heart's desires."

Jessica gasps, "Her am being really proper hocus-pocus witchperson?"

"Jessica, a bit of respect please."

"But her am being witchy!"

He glares at her and Jessica sinks. Her excitement is still there, though, and she resents having to subdue it. The Doctor ignores the filthy looks she shoots him from time to time. Says softly, "Tell me a bit more about that."

Are these the questions that were supposed to be so terrible?

Lizzie breathes deeply, tries to find a place to start. Her story goes back as far as she can remember. As a child, she walked through the woods with her mother. And she would look at what grew and knew, clear as something learned by rote, how to prepare it and what effect it would have on another human. Lizzie had only to set eyes on the sufferer of some unknown ailment, and she would know what had to be done.

Her teenage years made things stranger still. Her talents expanded beyond botany and medicine. Someone could tell her what thing they wanted most dearly, and she would know how to get it for them. The possibilities opened in front of her, forking pathways like tree branches, mapping all the right turns to come to the desired end.

What other word is there to describe one who can mould the world to her will? She has strange knowledge, inexplicable gifts. A witch.

"My mother was always able to protect me. She was respected. And she knew what to say and what to keep quiet."

"What happened to her?"

Ah. There it is. There's the sour question. Lizzie bites again at the strawberry string. Then she bites again. Then, finally, "She went out to gather mushrooms. Nothing fancy, just for dinner. And it seems she got in the way of the hunt. Got in the way of a musket shot. It didn't kill her right away, but she was dead before she could be brought to me. Since then they've been looking for any excuse to bring me to the stake."

And that excuse came just lately, in the form of the demons that have been haunting the woods. Just because Lizzie still lives in her mother's cabin among the trees and not in the village. Just because both she and the darkling monsters had been seen to emerge from the forest. That was all they needed.

"But you, Doctor," she concludes, "you started to say something about them. That they were gone, and that they hadn't been demons at all but… And you stopped."

Jessica nods fervently, grumbling, "Because stops him before three-all-us am being burned."

"Because it wasn't important," the Doctor corrects quickly. "Nothing to it. They're all gone now. Village safe, no more demons, no more burnings." He turns to Jessica, pointing. Lizzie flinches. She's seen too much finger-pointing. It never seems to end well. Thankfully, there's no accusation. They appear to be jesting. She sighs while the Doctor cries, "And you, don't think just because you did a bit of useful coughing down there that I'm letting you off. Pay up."

Out of a pocket on her long tunic, the girl starts to produce a bag of those same biscuits they've been fighting over. He reaches for them, and has them almost in his hand when she draws them back. "Waits. Jessica am not remembering to have been making any other bets."

"What did I tell you when we were getting rid of those… _demons_?"

"That would soontimes be meeting much special creature in between all the humany persons, but not meets any creatures, only meets witchperson."

She _must_ be feeble-minded. It's not just her imperfect, idiot speech. But she looks so blank and honest even now. Even when she sees Lizzie look round, and set her hand upon the Doctor's arm, there's no flicker of understanding. "Creature?" Lizzie echoes. Begging for an explanation, and more than that for the explanation she wants.

"Oh, right-yes, Witch Elizabeth! Doctor am to have said that would be much powerful, lovely friend-alien, and-"

"_Cough_!" the Doctor barks desperately.

Jessica is silent, stunned. Then her eyes flick back and forth between them and she claps a hand to her too-loose lips. Mumbles vague syllables through it that might have started out as 'Sorry, Doctor'.

The Doctor pats Lizzie's hand. Lifts it up from his sleeve and returns it to her. "Everything will become very clear, I promise you that. But in good time. Can you have a little faith in me until then?"

He seems so honest, so deserving. And even as he speaks with her, his other hand is stuck out behind him, fingers grabbing and grabbing until Jessica places the bag of biscuits into his hand.

Lizzie looks at their sweet rituals, the jokes between them. It is no vast exercise of her abilities to know that she can be safe here, and happy.

Lizzie nods. "Yes."

"Now. I take it you're not keen on just going home."

Something of an understatement. The cabin among the trees has been her home since birth. But since her mother's death it was never the same, and since she was dragged from her bed by the torch-bearing villagers, bound in her half-sleep and buried under prayers, she has no desire ever to return.

"We can take you anywhere. Flying box, remember?"

"Any-any-_any_where," Jessica insists. "Places her am not even knows about."

"The New World." Lizzie doesn't even need to think. The words are out so quickly she's barely aware of speaking. "Virginia. Could you take me to Virginia? I know it's a long journey but your flying machine seems to manage uncommon speed."

"That's one way of putting it," he smiles, and tips another spoon of sugar into her tea. "I'll get us there, don't you worry. Meantime, Jessica will show you to a wardrobe. If you'll forgive my saying so, this sackcloth look is doing _nothing_ for you."


	3. The Knowing Of Things

"What's taking so long? And why do I never learn not to send women to wardrobes? Jessica, I'm disappointed in you. River can't help herself, Clara gets overwhelmed with the universal selection. You, I thought, had your head screwed on. And yet here we are, and me disappointed, and-"

That's him. Finally, Lizzie can stop trying to argue with this tactless girl and be saved. She rushes to the doorway, looking both ways into the corridor. This labyrinth is the reason she didn't dare run. Finding her way back to the main door seemed a task that might require more than her usual intuition, and how, then, was she to get out of the sky even if she found it?

"Doctor?" she says to the left.

His voice continues, "It's really rather bad form, you know. Reinforcing stereotypes and gender binaries, making me think you don't know what's really important and-"

"Doctor?" Lizzie asks to the right.

"Honestly, the very best thing you could say, my dear, is that you were trying to cheer Elizabeth up, and even then this is barely more than admirable, given that she obviously won't-" and here he appears through a hatch in the ceiling, swinging his feet down from a ladder to hang like an ape. Slowly, looking into her frightened eyes, he concludes, "-understand the gesture. Hello, Lizzie."

"Doctor! Doctor, your assistant would have me saved from the fire only to be thrown in an asylum!"

"I'm sure that's the last thing she'd have," he murmurs uncertainly. Cranes, looking over Lizzie's shoulder. His beloved _fool_ is trying on a brown coat so long on her it gathers on the floor.

Lizzie puts aside her own humiliation to step back into his line of sight, forcing him to see her. "There is not enough of this dress that it might be called a dress. And these breeches! Like another layer of skin!"

"Am being called _leggends_. Even Jessica is to be knowing that…"

The Doctor peers at her. For a moment, Lizzie even dreams that he might say something sensible. Instead, "You _look_ like someone."

"Claraperson am teaching Jessica about fashionings."

Lizzie stamps her foot. "I do not know where you come from, or who this Clara may be, but in Virginia I will be taken for a harlot and clapped in irons!"

"Oh, absolutely. In Virginia, in the year of our Lord 1654, you would almost undoubtedly be taken for a harlot and clapped in irons."

"Isn't that what I said?"

The foolish girl creeps up at Lizzie's shoulder. Perhaps she is _finally_ beginning to suspect that she may have made a mistake. There is a sort of hope, but only for a moment. "That's not _quite_," the Doctor informs her, "what you said."

"No. You added an extraneous reference to the date."

"Interesting you should use the word, 'extraneous', Elizabeth…"

They're mad. Both of them. Obviously her earlier trust was misguided and misplaced. So often that's the way with lunatics. They can be so charismatic until their true natures show. Lizzie opens her mouth to argue, but never gets a chance to speak; the girl puts out her arm and eases her to one side. As small as she is, there's an incredible strength. Lizzie can't help but get out of the way.

She is now wearing a soft, wide hat, and with the coat on and her hands on her hips, she is of a particularly ridiculous silhouette. "Doctor, what am meaning 'extry-neouss'?"

"Well done. That's very good pronunciation for a first attempt. And do keep that hat on. Suits you."

"But what am _meaning_? Because is having 'extry' in, and _extry_ am meaning not nessysary. And Doctor am having said that him not does anything for scaring of WitchElizabeth unless absolutely nessysary."

The Doctor joins his hands as if in prayer. Points them at her and opens his mouth. The girl gives him the mildest look and he closes it again. Waves a finger as though he has a very good point to make. Jessica raises an eyebrow and this too disappears into silence. In the end he sighs, "Yeah, but the Tardis doesn't want to. Anyway, I think I've already been banished from Jamestown by 1654. Long story, all about a man named John Smith, and not the John Smith you're thinking of. To cut it short, we're not in 1654, probably for the best, Lizzie will do exactly as she is, and I wasn't just flattering you about that hat. Consider it yours, and both of you follow me."

No. No, they will _not_ follow. Jessica is free to do as she likes – this, it seems, mostly involves preening herself in the new hat and scampering happily off in his wake. Lizzie, however, is neither so happy nor so gullible. She will stand exactly where she is, thank you very much.

But they're not stopping. And that door did seem to be a great many twists and turns away from here.

She runs the few steps to catch up. They're having an argument, repeating the last word Lizzie didn't understand. _Tardis_. It's strange to her. She's never heard it before, of this she is sure. And yet, doesn't it sound like English? Doesn't it sound wonderful?

And what is that sound in the back of her mind, that little voice? _Time_, it whispers, _and relative dimensions in space_.

"Why am Tardis not wanting to land in 1654?"

"I don't think she has anything _against_ 1654. I think she really _likes_ the idea of 2086."

"Doctor!" the girl cries, scandalized. Grabs by the arm to turn him toward Lizzie; "Her am to be meeting car? Him am having rememberings for _last time_?"

He grabs a handful of Jessica's hood. This, and the fear in his eyes, he's being really quite serious. Half-growls, half-pleads; "We said we would never mention the Boadicea event again!"

"Then not repeats!"

"Will you stop worrying? Lizzie knows what a car is, don't you, Lizzie?" Naturally. It's like a coach, but noisier, and without horses. It must be fed oil like a lamp, and taken care of like the mechanics of a German press. Faster than even Mayor Borden's fine mare. A key opens it, and wakes it from slumber, and when the key is removed it sleeps again. Slowly, teasing, the Doctor begins to smile, "Yeah she does. Lizzie can drive, too. Lizzie can change a tyre, or a carburettor, or the left front indicator bulb of a VW Beetle, though I'm told that's an awkward job and I'm sure she'd rather not."

No. You have to pull out half the engine to change a bulb on those cursed things. It's because they're so small, so much machinery crushed into no space at all, and that makes it-

Lizzie breathes out, "What's going on?"

"With you? Nothing." He's a madman. He said that about the girl as well. He couldn't possibly know what's in her head, what horrors he's triggering. He just grins. "Out in Virginia, 2086? Probably loads."

He stretches out a hand to her. Not for support this time. Not for comfort. This time it's an invitation.

This time, with him pulling her along, she knows that 'Tardis' ought to be in capitals, and that it stands for all those other words she thought of. She doesn't recognize the machine in the centre of the first room any more than she did before, but then again nobody does. The technology of the Time Lords is a gap in universal knowledge. They kept it to themselves and then they disappeared so…

Time Lord. Lizzie knows what a Time Lord is. Now that she's thinking again, she knows it so clearly. It's as if she can look into his chest and see both of his hearts.

Lizzie stares. His fingers squeeze around hers. "Don't be scared. Accept it. Let it in."

Shaking her head, "I don't understand."

Far away from them, leaning on the door, Jessica raises her hand. "Not understanding either, but if is to be helping, Doctor am mosttimes knows what is doing."

The Doctor, who had been nodding along, glad of the girl's support, now wheels round and demands, "What do you mean, _mosttimes_?"

Lizzie knows. Plain as the written word, mosttimes means 'usually'. But that's not really what he was asking. It's another one of their happy little spats, pretty banter, quick wit slowed down only by the girl's inhibited language.

She trusted them. With the smell of burning torches clinging in her old clothes, she trusted them. When she couldn't think of anything about the pyre, Lizzie trusted.

She takes a deep breath, nods past them, and with still only the vaguest most terrified idea of what '2086' might mean, "Open the door, then."

[A/N – For all those who were confused, Jessica is an old bud of mine. The quickest way to get to know her would be the first few chapters of 'No Place For Scholars' by the same author. Or you can just hear from me now that she's a lovely little thing who likes very much hanging around with Eleven. She was deaf for a vast portion of her life; her dubious skill in English comes from lip-reading and limited written word. Much love, Sal.]


	4. Empty

As it turns out, Lizzie _does_ know what a car is, and what it does, and how to make it go and how to fix it when it won't. She also knows what a stoplight is. She knows what bagels are. When she concentrates, she finds that the word 'barista' is already in her mind. In fact everything here, while strange and new and utterly shocking for those first moments, is familiar when she takes just a second to reflect. It's not even very deeply buried. Hardly buried at all. Like there are a thousand little drawers in her head, little pockets of information, and she always knows just which one to open.

It's the same as walking in the woods and seeing a new flower; she just knows.

"Doctor, this is very strange."

Gently, understanding, "Overwhelming for you, I imagine."

Lizzie shakes her head. The girl Jessica has taken off, and is halfway down the street buying a hotdog from a sidewalk cart, probably full of salmonella. Salmonella. When Lizzie thinks of street food and disease, she knows what salmonella is. "Just the opposite. It all feels so natural."

"It's exactly what you've always done. What you called your witchcraft. You never had any reason to know it went any deeper than that."

"And how deep does it go?"

But he's looking over her shoulder and nods, "I think Jessica's asking how you want your hotdog."

Just a thought, and the flavour of the overcooked meat is on her tongue, and the flavours of the various condiments come and go until they form their most pleasing combination. "No mustard," she mumbles, and sees the instructions relayed by hand signals, "and extra onions. Doctor, what is this?"

His smile is electric, gleeful, as though he has the pleasure of explaining Santa Claus to a toddler for the first time. "_Knowledge_!" His big bony hands make more shapes in the air. These ones are meaningless, except to express the wild unbridled excitement he feels, so potent those hands can feel it physically and would capture it. "Lots and lots of it. Encyclopaedic and sensory and fully experiential and instantly accessible! Like the internet, except without the bad bits and the audience participation!"

'Internet' is quite a large concept. It takes her an extra beat to comprehend that. Gives him time enough to add, "If it helps at all, I'm _madly_ jealous."

Jessica returns, balancing two hotdogs in one hand while pushing a third into her own mouth. Still she has an elbow free to stick in the Doctor's ribs. "Not does. Jellyus am being bad thing."

"So's talking with your mouth full. Now, remind me later on, when we've got a minute, that I want you to sit down somewhere quiet with Elizabeth and tell her your full name. It's an experiment, and it's important."

"Why not does now?"

"Because what neither of you, not the super-intelligent one nor the highly-trained former intelligence operative, seems to have noticed is that just down that street opposite, there's a huge crowd and a number of ambulances and police and fire engines and allsorts."

They turn, both in sync, to look where he's showing. Glance at each other, confirming it. There is, yes, a huge crowd just down the next street. Either of the ladies, if asked, would add that it has crowded around a large pit which has collapsed inward, swallowing the whole intersection.

Lizzie, once she's had a look at the street signs, would add more. She'd say that in 2086, Earth's America embarked on a program to expand its subterranean public transport system in an effort to make transcontinental travel easier and more affordable. After the fall of oil as the primary means of power, deposits mined out of parts of the United States had become the new source, leaving the superpower self-sufficient, other countries dependant and willing to pay. This vast and rapid expansion had led to several similar collapses and disasters.

Virginia's, in 2086 (September, for those who care for details like the ones Lizzie now has), was notable only in that there were no casualties.

And for what was found at the bottom of the pit.

"Adam," she says. "They're going to name him Adam."

"Names who, Lizzie-Witchperson?"

The Doctor tries to take his vengeance for her earlier violence. He, however, is much taller, and try as he might can't angle his elbow into her ribs without lowering himself almost to his knees. "Stop fishing for spoilers. It's only down the street, you can wait and see."

Jessica becomes suddenly very motivated. The crowd might otherwise have proved an all-but-impenetrable barrier. But where Jessica moves amongst them they jump away, clearing a channel as though pricked with tiny needles. Lizzie and the Doctor need only fall into her wake, until the police cordon looms. Then, the Doctor pulls her back. "Don't talk," he says, "and keep your arms covered. Lizzie, difficult as it might be for you, pretend you know nothing."

Then he quite simply reaches for the crime-scene tape and lifts it like a gentleman, allowing them to duck through. By the time the Doctor himself is managing the tricky feat of manoeuvring his own spindly limbs beneath the ribbon, the nearest officer has arrived to shoo them away. "Ah! Good afternoon, Inspector!" Somehow, the Doctor's knee is turned once through the tape, and his shoulder has not quite made it under yet. "No, wait, America, not Inspector, it's… Detective? Good afternoon. We're from – Jessica, get the paper out of my jacket, would you?" The girl rushes up and feels around his inside pockets. Lizzie watches her come out with a little folded cover, and inside nothing but some plain white paper. She places this into the one of the Doctor's hands that might nominally be described as free. "We're from, the… uh… um… Jessica, you do it. Remember to concentrate, which I can't."

The girl takes the cover back, and shows the paper to the baffled detective. "Them am-" she begins, then with incredible force-of-will corrects herself, "_We are_ most totally supposed to be being here." So perfectly earnest is she that Lizzie almost believes the detective takes her word for it. But the paper holds his eyes. After seeing it, he is so silently, determinedly helpful that the Doctor (once he has extricated himself from that flimsy plastic barrier) looks at his seemingly innocent little friend with impressed and almost fearful awe.

Behind the detectives back, he hisses, "You're getting terribly good at that."

"But was to have been being truth-tells. Are being supposed to be here. Tardis am having said so."

_Psychic paper_. The detective believed because Jessica believed. In whatever vast stores of information Lizzie has access to, 'psychic paper' moves from being an unconfirmed rumour to being a genuine artefact, of one known and verified occurrence, in the possession of the Doctor.

Then, finally, they are brought to the edge of the collapse. The asphalt has fallen away in huge slabs, lining the sides of the pit like giant scales. At the bottom, a fire crew has just finished work, clearing a space. And there amongst the rubble, the neon glow of hi-vis jackets, a team of baffled paramedics trying to work, and not quite knowing what to do with themselves.

"He's comatose," one is crying, as though it's the simplest thing in the world and the rest are ignoring it.

But the lady who holds the full-body scanner shakes her head, taps the screen with the back of her hand. "Nate, look at the readings, would you? Look at the brain activity. There is _nothing_ wrong with him."

A second man, the last of them, yelps and steps away from the body being discussed. "Damn it, he blinked. The hell is this?"

Jessica ducks behind the Doctor and pushes him forward. While he reels on the edge, "I couldn't agree more, but I'll do it in my own time."

She groans and goes ahead of him, hopping from stone to stone, finding the most stable route down. Faced with two possible steps, she hesitates, and leans towards the left. "Wait," Lizzie cries. Physics, the way the other rocks are lined up against each other, she'll start a slide. Injure herself, cut off the emergency workers at the bottom, strand both witch and Doctor halfway down. "The other way," and though the asphalt scale wobbles, though a scattering of gravel falls away from it, there is no such catastrophe that comes to pass.

At the bottom, Jessica waits. She's been noticed, but then she was told not to speak. Told to keep her arms covered too, so she won't lift them even to wave hello. Stands blithely smiling, gesturing to the approaching Doctor – _he'll explain everything_.

The medics, for lack of anything more productive to do, accept this, and watch him coming. It's that or argue about the body-scan again.

The Doctor, as a matter of fact, explains nothing. He flashes the psychic paper with barely a thought and moves them out of his way. He could make something up if he really wanted to but really? Honestly? Lying's no fun. It's the things you have to lie _for_ that are fun.

In this case, it's a man. He looks like a perfectly normal man. For 2086, his clothes are a little out of date. Straight-cut jeans, a checked shirt, a padded bodywarmer over the top. He looks almost familiar, this man in the pit, except that his hair is dark, and his eyes are green. They are also wide open and, as the third medic was so shocked to discover, they occasionally blink.

Which is nothing so odd, the Doctor muses. All eyes blink. It's how they keep moist and focussed and clean. Blinking's a very useful thing indeed. But usually, someone who is able to blink is able to do other things as well. Like move. Talk. Sit up. Dance the rhumba. Generally they don't just lie at the bottoms of deep craters, flat on their backs, arms straight by their sides, staring at the sky. And blinking. Generally they do a bit more.

He looks up from this mystery and into the three baffled faces. Not a one of them has even opened their mouths yet. Gesturing to the man on the ground, "Um… _story_, maybe?"

"There's no story," says the one called Nate. "They were drilling the tunnel and there was a cave-in. And when they started clearing the debris, there he was."

"He hardly looks like a quarryman," Lizzie cuts in. She is looking, in particular, at his flat canvas trainers. How lucky he is to live in a time when marking one's clothing with a five pointed star is not a death sentence.

"Well, that's the big question," says the woman with the scanner, "He's not one of the tunnel crew, and the police already looked at the footage from a watch-drone that was in the area; he wasn't here before the collapse."

"Then he was underground already," the Doctor says. "The cave-in only revealed him."

The woman scoffs, "You really think that's likely."

"No, not at all. Not in the slightest. But it's definitely possible, in a vague, outlandish sort of a way, and it's the only other explanation. There's probably a very neat, eloquent way to condense that sentence, but it's for a much more thoughtful man than I to do the condensing. I'll never need to bother with that sentiment again, so I shan't bother rephrasing it. Anyway, never mind how he came to be here. That's not what you were arguing about. You were arguing about his condition, tell me about that."

He was addressing the ambulance crew.

It's Lizzie who answers him. On her knees, next to the still-breathing man with his still-regular heartbeat and his blinking, she says quite simply, "Empty. There's no person here, Doctor. There's a human. Living and breathing. But there's no person."

Jessica, having happily devoured her own hotdog, comes now and takes the remaining half of the Doctor's from his hand. Almost before he has noticed the theft, she has replaced its weight with something she found while they were talking.

The man, the one Lizzie says they will name Adam, had a bag with him. In the rush to help, it was thrown or kicked away from the body. Jessica has been rooting through it these few minutes. What she has just given the Doctor is a newspaper. He glances at it and then slowly turns to look at her. "While I'm sure this devastating hurricane really was a tragedy of untold proportions, I'm not entirely sure it's got anything to do with-"

She rolls her eyes, "Is to be looking at numbers of _date_, please."

The Doctor looks again. "Oh," he says. "Oh. Quite a large 'oh', actually. November twentieth," it says.

"But it's only September," says the skittish third medic.

The Doctor hands him the newspaper, fresh and white as the day it was printed, so that he may see for himself. Says darkly, "_2013_."


	5. Sending Messages

From the secretive way that Jessica is rubbing her eyes, like a child who doesn't want to be sent to bed, the Doctor might assume that it's been about a day since he went to fetch her. Her final university exams had just ended, and it had been his solemn promise to distract her with all the usual mystery and adventure and universe-spanning wonder and awe (her painstakingly chosen words, not his) until the day of the results. Then again, for a first day out, he might have overdone it.

The paramedics, by the way, are all still standing about. The young out-of-date man is still lying flat on the rubble, with Lizzie hanging over him. Jessica is away at the bag again, maybe looking for another clue, maybe just looking for-

"Ah!" she mutters with joy, and when the Doctor looks over his shoulder she is unwrapping a peanut-butter sandwich out of clingflim.

He looks away, pressing one hand to his suddenly delicate stomach. "That's eighty-three years old!"

"Is looking and smells fine."

"In that case don't eat the evidence."

She sighs and wraps it up again, puts it back in the bag.

But what the Doctor would _mean_ to say, were he saying all of this out loud, is that all of this is going on around him. He himself is still part of the scene and part of the looking and arguing and discussing. But he's an old and very intelligent being, with both the prowess and the practice to be able to hold a small recap of the day's events.

It all started out very easy going. He got that right. Dropped the Tardis outside Jessica's exam hall, presented her with a box of Jammie Dodgers and explained the rules of proposition bets. And then off to a Swiss hillside to visit his dear old mate Julie Andrews on one of her old sets. Then a hasty hop to a film editing suite to remove themselves from the finished product. _The Sound of Music_ could have easily become a very different film without that little bit of subterfuge.

Maybe they should have stopped for a while, after that. Had chips somewhere. Let his little peacekeeper, all studied out, fall asleep still humming _Edelweiss_ to herself.

But, no, no, oh no, not him, nope, never crossed his mind to stop.

"Oi," and now that he's thinking about it he did have to nudge her to get her to listen, "Oi."

"Yes-what, Doctor?"

"I've got an idea that might go wrong, but if it goes right it might turn into a nice surprise for you."

Magic word, that. 'Surprise'. You can keep abracadabra and alakazam and keep open sesame and expelli-blooming-armus, you can keep them all. What spell is there that holds more power over the unsuspecting human than the simple word 'surprise'?

"Surprise for Jessica?"

"Yes."

"Is to be being nice surprise, if becoming surprise?"

"I wouldn't do it if it was nasty. But we might have to fight off some forest monsters."

She rolled her eyes, "Like her am being _any_ scared of forrymonsters."

"And possibly save a damsel, but then, out of all the humans, we'll meet someone who turns out of be a very special creature."

"Like Mrs Vastra?"

"Same only different. If I've got it right."

She considered that. Tossed it up and warily concluded, "Doctor am much many times am right. Special creature am to be being surprise?"

That word again. Nobody can hear that word and not latch on to it, not pursue it. Matter of fact, the Doctor might almost say it was his favourite word, were it not for the existence of 'flibbertigibbet' in the human tongues, and 'rusk', precisely because it has been so much fun to pursue. In all the brightest moments of his life he has been pursuing surprise, rarely even knowing where to begin, only that the pursuit was going to be a blast. ('Surprise', in a side note, while he's noticing it, is almost an anagram of 'pursuit', making it really a very clever word indeed.)

And now, for instance, _surprise!_, a perfectly preserved, still-living human from eighty-odd years previous lying in a pit in the ground, lunch and newspaper intact. Surprise!

This, of course, neatly skips over the whole part where they rescued Lizzie from burning and the Doctor began to wake her up to her full potential, but that's all still very fresh in his head. Anyway, he decided round about the forrymonsters that this _all_ probably could have waited for tomorrow. Oh well. It's all done now. Just this latest chapter to deal with. It'll be good practice for Lizzie.

The paramedics have started talking about the emergency drones coming in to lift them and the body up out of the crater. Jessica is happily reading the horoscopes from 2013, despite having no idea when her birthday is therefore what starsign would apply to her. So the Doctor kneels down by his rescued witch, her hair still smelling faintly of damp forest and hot torch, and asks her, "What is your diagnosis?"

"You're the Doctor."

"I am. And as such I am really very clever. Most of the time. There are a few dodgy moments, but mostly it's cleverness. And you are a million-billion-trillion times cleverer than me, Elizabeth, even if you don't know it yet. You'll get there, one zero at a time. How many zeros would that be, by the way?"

"Depends if you use American or English notation and if you really mean one sextillion. Either twenty-one or thirty-six."

"And a clever woman like you can't even give me a guess what might be wrong with this sadly-unfashionable soul here before us?"

"_Soul_," she murmurs back at him. She animates, getting caught up in her explanation, and the Doctor begins to smile, "That might be it. Or some part of it anyway. Doctor, the only real sense I get from this body is that, while it might be alive, there is certainly no one living in it. At best, it's an empty shell. At worst it is a fit dwelling for demons. Had this man a pact with the devil, and the devil come to collect? But then why does the body still live? And why has it not aged and withered?"

Well, they could pass a happy and exciting couple of days popping back and forth between 2013 and 2086 and trying to find out, but that sounds time-consuming and exhausting, and the sort of heavy-handed mystery he'd been hoping to _avoid_ on this little jaunt.

He takes her by the wrist and guides her hand towards the body. Lizzie's arm stiffens, fighting him, and she sighs with relief when the female medic catches sight of them and cries, "Hey! We still don't know what's wrong with him. Don't make me order a quarantine."

Jessica climbs heavily up from where she's sitting. Pushes back her left sleeve. There is a round, bluish scar, like a knot in wood, on her forearm below the elbow. Out of this, slow and controlled, pushes a long, sharp stake, growing organically from her. Still in his grip, the Doctor feels Lizzie start to shake. "Don't worry about that. We'll do her later, once you've had a bit of practice with this man here, alright?"

"Can does what wants, mate," Jessica is growling, and moving with ease and precision across the broken ground.

"Easy," says the one called Nate, "Kelly here just loves ordering quarantines, don't you?"

In fear and shock, Kelly nods along until Jessica walks away again. Then, behind her back, hisses at him, "Didn't I apologize for the plague scare?"

"Four months in isolation-" he snaps, and they go back to arguing, the bio-engineered sword apparently forgotten.

Jessica snaps it off her arm and sits down cross-legged by the body. Holding the stake across her lap where Lizzie can quite happily stare blankly at it. "How are you feeling?" the Doctor asks gingerly.

"Fine."

"Only you were looking a bit grumpy and threatening on it there, and-"

"Doctor, can hear hovery-whirly noises, coming close. Is bad?"

"The emergency drones," he says, "coming to lift away the body. C'mon, Liz, give it a go."

Jessica is playing with the stake, balancing it on one finger by the broken end. She was so very quick to jump to his defence. Lizzie isn't sure if it's fear or trust that makes her put her hand back out and lay it across the mystery victim's heart.

It's like fire. Not big or bold, but strong against an overwhelming darkness. Like the flame of a candle. It burns right at the core of his being, and is irremovable, inextinguishable, despite everything else having been stripped away around it. There is no person here, she was right about that, but here in this spark is the person that longs to be, some scrap that even bleakest evil could not touch. Here is humanity striving to remain where all humanity ought to be impossible.

Lizzie lashes her hand away, hissing. The Doctor takes it, carefully studying the shiny round burn on her palm.

He asks what she saw, what she felt, and Lizzie can only stammer. So he takes her under his arm, nods to Jessica, "Find us a way back up the side. We'll meet this fellow again in his hospital bed." He lifts his voice, shouting to the medics over the noise of the approaching drones, "Where will he be taken, by the way?"

In the same moment that Kelly begins 'We are not at liberty to-', the unnamed third shouts back, "Obama Memorial," and receives a sound thumping from her for his troubles.

"Thank you. Now, as for us, back to the Tardis, I think. We all could do with a sound rest."

Three jumps ahead, marking her path with scratches of the stake, Jessica calls back, "Is not being much-very tired."

"No, you just threatened medical professionals at blade-point because they were naughty."

"Was _helps_ him."

"Greatly appreciated, but isn't your pending degree supposed to be in _Peace_ Studies?"

"Then not bothers helps anymore. And for Doctor information, strategically interventioning in conflict am being totally sound-"

"Don't even finish that sentence. Tell me you didn't write that on your exam paper."

She shakes her head and hops farther away from the conversation. "Honestly," he murmurs to Lizzie, "I really must find someone my own age to spend time with. The younger they get the more work they are."

"Was hearing that." Jessica crests the upper edge ahead of them. Stands looking at something in the distance, squinting against the oncoming night. "Doctor, what am means this?"

"Can't see it yet."

Jessica offers her arm and hauls him up with an ease Lizzie can't quite believe until she is given the same treatment. She might wonder, but the Doctor doesn't. Even if there were any surprise in it for him, he would be distracted. The beacon on top of the Tardis is flashing, a low double pulse like a heartbeat, or like the signal on a 21st century mobile phone that he has, "A message!" He begisn to run before he remembers to turn to them, "Do catch up, won't you, only I have a message, and I don't know what it says, and it's a message, and I have to go and see."

"And he complains of _your_ childishness," Lizzie murmurs to Jessica.

"Heard that!" he cries over his shoulder.

Throwing open the door of the Tardis, the Doctor skids in, almost off his feet, falling forward onto the stairwell with his knee in his chest, but even the pain of that can't stop him, not until he swings himself around on a lever he's sure can take the weight and won't be irrevocably damage and comes to a screeching, clanking stop hanging on the monitor. His fingers waggle entirely of their own accord as they reach for the controls, looking at his latest message and where it's come from. He knows that address. It's Clara! Clara, and he wasn't expecting her, and she'll have something to say, and it will be – for those of you who hadn't guessed this already – a _surprise_.

"Messagemessagemessagemessagemessage-_play_!" And he pushes hard on the button.

"Doctor!" comes the terrified cry, and his excitement evanesces. There are two faces on screen and neither of them is Clara's. He doesn't even know how these faces were able to contact him, only that if they have, it must be dreadfully important. The crippling fear that crumples their features and hangs tears in their eyes is something of a giveaway too. "Doctor!" they're crying. Angie and Artie. Somehow here are two children, charges of his charge, pleading across eighty years, "Doctor, you have to help! Come and help, Clara didn't come home, you have to come and help!"

"Well," he mumbles, and sets a new course, "So much for the quiet night in."

The door closes automatically on Lizzie and Jessica before the Tardis can dematerialize.


	6. Clara

The number of the superphone requires three standard telephones to dial and, written down, covers about nine pages of an A5 notebook, front and back. Granted, that's in the Doctor's handwriting, which is not known for its compact grace. Nonetheless, it is composed of quite a number of numbers, and a few wiggly hand movements, and one particular manoeuvre that requires passing the receiver twice behind one's head. He recommends this only be attempted with cordless phones, to lessen the risk of strangulation. He's lost friends over that one.

You may imagine, from your own experience, how difficult it might be to teach these exercises to a companion.

From this _imagined_ experience, you may well imagine the difficulty Clara is having in teaching it to two children when he finds her. That's why he stands in the hallway until she notices him; it's a funny old watch. That, and that he needs those restful minutes.

The Doctor knew he was coming back to head her off. This is not a miscalculation. This is not the inherent inaccuracy of one-pilot Tardis travel. He knew he was doing this. He knew it was technically a matter of interference. He knew he was interrupting an established pattern of events and therefore contravening the most basic tenets of responsible time-travel. He also knew those children were crying, and had had to pass the receivers of three separate phones twice around their heads to let him know it. There was no conflict. He wouldn't even have called it a decision.

Now that he sees her, even in this frustrated state, confused, half-remembering, determinedly keeping herself from snapping at her young charges, the overwhelming rage he felt when he thought she was in trouble is a bitter taint. Relief is total. Easy to forget the brutal depths he's capable off while relief is fresh. Angie sees him first, and Clara follows her eyes. Sees him and smiles. A small smile, thoughtless, wondering why he's here, but still a smile.

A smile and he forgets enough of his anger to remember he's just abandoned Lizzie and Jessica in 2086.

"Doctor," Clara mumbles, and he finds himself thinking the other women will be fine, will take care of each other until he gets back. "We were just talking about you."

After just a millisecond of a pause, he swallows the lump in his throat and launches into the act, "So I see!" He pulls Clara away by the shoulder, turning their back to the children while hissing loud enough for them to hear, "Why are these uninitiated youths learning my home contact details?"

"Funny you should ask. There's a good reason."

"Promise?"

"_Double_ promise," Clara tells him, and with oh, such intriguing confidence.

"You do know I'm very old?" he says. Just a reminder. Just so she'll know where she stands. "And I've seen and done and heard just about _it all_, so whatever you've got that you seem to think is so-"

"You'll be interested."

His pretence breaks into barely-contained giggles, "I know I will! Oh, do tell, somebody stick the kettle on, fetch up the latest soufflé attempt, the day I'm having, Clara, you just would not believe if I told you, good thing we can go there-"

He is, throughout this, making himself comfortable at the table. His left hand reaches across and corrects one of the sums of Artie's maths homework. The forefinger of his right delivers fascinated little flicks to some beads Angie has strung into her hair, wondering how they stay on. And yet, Clara is not putting the kettle on. No soufflé, burnt or sunken or eggy or otherwise, is forthcoming.

So he looks at her again. Maybe there's something he's missed. At first, it doesn't seem that way. Clara looks very much like Clara. In fact, she looks _exactly_ like Clara. She is much aided in this by the fact that she _is_ Clara, that helps, but it's _more_ than that. For instance, she's wearing one of those little dresses she likes, with the high waist and the long skirt that flares when she turns and has a lot more material to it than it appears to. This dress is a deep wine red and patterned all over with tiny white flowers. She's wearing a little belt high up on it with a gold clasp, and dark tights, and little wedge-heeled boots, and her black jacket, and a watch, and really looking an awful lot like _Clara_, like the image that comes into his mind when he thinks the name-jacket, jacket she's wearing her jacket her jacket is on and she's folding her arms at him.

"You're supposed to be somewhere already, aren't you?"

"Couple of minutes ago."

"No problem. After all, what's a Tardis for, except never having to be late to the party?"

"No." She snapped that. Her eyes are that little bit wider, body frozen, waiting for his reaction.

Thinking they are beneath his attention, Angie is nodding at her brother, the two of them silently discussing whether or not they should leave the room now. The Doctor, with absolute nonchalance, reaches out and sets a hand on each of their shoulders. "Don't be silly," he breezes, with only a touch of curious terseness, "I don't mind giving you a lift."

"It's fine, thanks." Clara tries to smile. It doesn't take. "Tardis always messes up my hair."

So he tightens his grip on Angie ever so slightly and asks coyly, "Off to meet a gentleman, are you?"

Clara's resolve suddenly surges, "Yes, actually."

But Angie looks at the table, and nowhere else. Artie squirms under the Doctor's other hand. Lifting his forefingers up just enough, he waggles them back and forth; as close as he can get to pointing, "Better than a lie detector, these two. A lie detector wouldn't have caught that. Because I don't doubt for a moment that you're off to meet a gentleman, but I got the context wrong, didn't I? There's nothing romantic about this at all."

Clara relents. Not the good sort of relenting, where you come out with the truth all of a sudden. No, she just gives up the lie and hardens. Turns away from him and heads for the door. All she deigns to say, and this with an edge he could never expect from her, "You're not coming."

Suddenly plaintive, out from under Clara's gaze, Angie grabs back at the Doctor's arm. "She won't tell us either!"

It all leaves him feeling a bit guilty about using the children to gauge her. He turns his determined grip into a hug, one under each arm. "You two, off and watch cartoons. I'll sort this out." There's a mutter between them, how they'd better just go to bed. Dad, apparently, is home, and they don't get cartoons on their little bedroom tellies at this time of night. The Doctor can't have that. He can't have them in separate rooms and each of them with nothing to do, worrying about Clara. He needs them distracted. A quick flash of the sonic towards the ceiling does the trick. "Go and try the one in Angie's room now. One night only, mind."

They go, but only ruefully.

Clara, for her part, is standing at the door, still with her back to him. She hasn't let herself out. She isn't moving now.

"I know," he begins, "you would never willingly worry those children-"

"_No_."

"-Or me. So what on Earth is going on?"

This time she looks at him. Big warm eyes, filled with pain and pity, truly torn. She looks him over and says again, "You're not coming, Doctor."

"It's funny, but every time you say that it sounds like more of a challenge."

She turns the lock on the door. But the Doctor still has his screwdriver in his hand and turns it back. Clara turns it again, and again he turns it back. They do this twice more before she bites, "Yeah, very mature."

"You're just getting later and later for this mysterious meeting. You were going to tell me all about it two minutes ago."

"No," she says simply, "I wasn't. When I get back, I'll tell you all about it."

She snaps the lock, and this time holds the snib open, struggling with it when the sonic hums, but she has the door open before he can stop her. The Doctor pulls himself up from the table and follows after. "And if you don't come back?" he calls. Halfway down the garden path, she turns, looking at him strangely, fearfully. "Forgive me if I'm jumping to wild conclusions, but it sounds like that sort of an evening."

"If I don't come back, you'll never even hear about it, because I didn't get to finish teaching the kids how to call you."

"So I have to come with you. I'm committed now. If they can never call me then I'm stuck with things as they are now, I've made a mess out of that part already, so I have to run with what I've created for us, temporally speaking."

"You mean… You mean I've already done this? And… And they had to-?" She trembles. He tries to go to her. The dimness of streetlights, the fine drizzle in the air, she looks small and cold and vulnerable. Whatever's going on, whatever's on her mind, it's too much for her. Which sounds like an insult but that's not how he means it. Clara's capable. She's smart and brave and very, very capable. He just doesn't want her to _need to be_. Whatever it is, he wants to take it away. To share in the carrying, at least. He puts an arm out to wrap round her. But Clara reaches up, bats him away with one hand. Sways her head and repeats sadly, "You're still not coming."

"Then you're not going," he says, and catches her by the collar.

Something about this panics her. She tugs away and mutters and calls out, "No, I have to, please." But she can't quite reach his holding hand with any strength. The Doctor turns and starts to pull her towards the Tardis.

"Quick chat, you and I. Don't worry. Soon as we're all caught up I'll drop you back to five minutes ago and you can be on time and everything."

"No, I can't be here, he'll come here. What about the Maitlands? I have to go or he'll find me here."

This time, Clara is hugged. Whether she wants to be or not. It's the Doctor who needs the warmth and the comfort of it. Needs to set his head down on top of hers and sigh longingly, "I want to go back to Switzerland." He needs to hear her be so confused as to murmur, 'What?' even in the midst of her distress. "So where is this meeting you're late for?"

"Not far."

"Let's go. And if you, Miss Oswald, say one more time that I am not coming with you… there'll be… consequences. I'm sorry, I'm not good at threats. Imagine a fond but firm threat and add that in yourself."

She drifts for a moment, then nods, "Okay, got one." They go together, both of them feeling much better about it, through the garden gate and out into the street. "There's a park, just around the corner. But Doctor, you have to stay out of sight. I don't know what's going to happen."

"I will stay out of sight-"

"Thank you."

"-Until some danger to you makes itself known when I will heroically step in and rescue my third damsel of the day." Which might be slightly more than a day by now, speaking purely in terms of twenty-four-hour stretches, but still, between whisking off exhausted students and saving witches from the flames and now this, the Doctor expects to be sewing a Shining Armour badge to his sash somewhere in the very near relative future. Clara is much less impressed, and goes on another little rant about how he simply mustn't be seen and not interfere and this man she's supposed to be meeting felt really dangerous and _something_, but he's busy quite liking the idea of performing three so different tailored rescues in (almost) one day.

"I'm not kidding," she seethes, shoving him as though it might pull him out of the reverie. "I'm scared, Doctor."

"Yes. Hence rescuing. It's not a rescue when you're enjoying yourself."

"I'm not scared for me, I'm scared for you."

"Then explain why." She fights with herself. Ultimately, she holds her silence. "Go on. Give'us a clue. Little clue. A clue about a clue."

"Well, Doctor-"

This is not Clara's voice. He heard those words and thought they might be the hesitant beginnings of an explanation. He was so ready for that, so convinced she couldn't resist him forever, that he assumed. Takes him a moment or two to realize that Clara isn't the one who spoke. And the words themselves don't sound explanatory, but smug and self-satisfied and a little bemused. "_Well_, Doctor," the new voice says. "What a pleasant surprise."

He finds Clara stepping in front of them. "The park," she says, as nasty as she can possibly be, "We were going to meet at the park."

"We were going to meet at eight," the stranger says blithely.

The Doctor pushes a little of Clara's hair out of his periphery to get a good look at him. They have been interrupted by, as they had already discussed, a gentleman. It is clear from his sharp suit and careful posture, from the roundness of his vowels, that he at least _pretends_ to be a gentleman. He is tall and bald, with a diamond stud in one ear. He has a reserved, charming smile on his face. But above all of this, and beneath it and crawling in the skin and surrounding it like an aura, he gives a sense of danger, and of evil.

It is not a term the Doctor uses loosely, but the stranger for all his ordinariness exudes monstrosity.

"What does it matter where we meet?" he says, when Clara can't answer him. "One way or another you've brought me the Doctor."

"Oh, trust me, I tried not to."

Clara sounds almost tearful. The Doctor doesn't look to see whether or not she's crying. He has no desire to know and can't say what his reactions would be.

There's no decision to make; he steps in front of her.

Smiles and says wryly, "I should have known it was _you_." The stranger puts out a hand. The Doctor would shake it, except that he feels Clara tugging the back of his jacket. So instead he rolls his eyes at the hand, "As if I would make it that easy."

The stranger shrugs, "Can you blame me for trying?"

"Of course not. Everything's worth a pop, just once, don't you think?"

"Are you asking, Doctor, if I'm a gambling man?" His grin loses just enough of that reserve and becomes shark-like, vicious.

If Clara wasn't shaking and didn't need him to be steady, the Doctor might well give a little shudder. But as things stand he grins right back, "I'm asking if you have time-travel capacities at your disposal."

"Naturally."

"Then why don't we do this in 2086? I've found a little something there that might be of interest to a man of your… interests. I'll tell you where. And if you don't like it, well, you know where to find me if you come back to five minutes ago."

The gentleman produces a pocket watch on a long chain, and watches the second hand while he muses on it. "Sounds as though I can't lose."

"Then let's all just go," Clara says softly, pulling the Doctor's sleeve, trying to bring him with her.

She's still scared. Lonely and small with it. It takes several deep breaths to keep the bright, easy smile on his face, "Then let's make that the wager, shall we? Because I'd like to tell you here and now, 2013 or 2086 or the year one trillion and not if we lived through all the years between, you'll never win this one. I'd stake a whole _packet_ of Jammies on that."

As though they were great friends, the stranger laughs, "How can I refuse?! Oh, you are a _most_ refreshing catch, Doctor. To the future!"

Cagily, they face each other a moment. Then, beginning to turn, leaning away, hopping back as though they might catch each other. These little dances done, the stranger turns his way and begins to walk. The Doctor turns, and by physical force turns the transfixed Clara, guides her shuffling back towards the house.

From the corner of his mouth, "Clara?"

"Yeah?"

"Who was that?"


	7. Hope You've Guessed My Name

Clara is holding his hand. The Doctor's not sure she's even aware of it, but her fingers are knit through his. They only claw tighter when he sets his other hand over the top. He doesn't mind. Of course he doesn't. At least they've got plenty of time for it. They're still headed back to 2086, but the Tardis knows she has to loop around 800 B.C. a few times, until they're good and ready. The Doctor quite likes the warmth of her little hand, and its strength, and holding it.

But Clara doesn't feel like she can let go. That's what he doesn't like. He had to calibrate their destination and realign the rotor and take off, all one-handed.

And so, while the poor Tardis idles, spinning a few thousand years around the block, he takes her wordlessly to the nearest kitchen and sits her down while he makes tea.

"This looks an awful lot like the Maitlands' kitchen…" Clara murmurs.

"Really? Hadn't noticed. Don't draw spurious conclusions; it's not like I put it in so you could feel at home and maybe make _me_ a soufflé sometime, seeing everybody else gets soufflés." Her smile is dim and forgetful. It is, at least, a smile. That's enough for him to continue. "Clara, I do need to know what's going on. After all, I've only managed to _delay_ our meeting that gentleman again." She doesn't like that. Flinches when he says it. Finally lets go of his hand so that she can hug herself.

"I didn't mean to cut you out," she says, "or worry anybody. I just didn't know what to do."

"Start," he says, "at the very beginning. I'm reliably informed that it's a very good place to start."

Clara draws in a deep breath. He brings her tea and she sips at it. "It began," she begins, "two nights before the night we just left behind. He says his name is Louis, but I'm not sure that's true."

Quietly, evenly, she tells him the story. She had gone to pick up Angie and Artie from school. A little early, standing at the gates. Nodding along to the sound of the music in her headphones. She didn't even hear him slide up to her, and gasped when she felt the lithe, polite hand tapping her shoulder. Clara describes her initial reaction to the awful man in terms the Doctor finds very comforting; she felt the same way he did. Here before her was the _idea _of a gentleman. A natty dresser, a surface charmer, impeccable manners. But that was all. The rest was missing.

What rest? They would find that very hard to relate to you.

The Doctor does have one metaphor you might understand. He would ask if you remember the man in the pit, in the collapsed subway tunnel. And if you remember that, perhaps you remember Elizabeth King. A middle ages witch was able to diagnose the man's condition where all future technology had failed.

She said that he had been stripped of all self, of all humanity, except that one little spark in him refused to go out. Hence he blinked. Hence his heart marches on beat by beat.

The Doctor would ask you if you could imagine that. And if you could, perhaps you could imagine just the opposite. Because what met them on a cold suburban street last night, what crept up to Clara at the school gates, is a creature just as devoid, just as empty of life and joy and human kindness.

But there is no spark that keeps this thing alive. Instead, at the heart of it, is nothing more than a glowing black coal. The exact nature of it is still a mystery. Whether the mock gentleman is driven on by avarice or ambition or revenge or which of the darker forces, they still don't know. The Doctor fears most gravely, it won't stay that way for long.

It's a lengthy process, hollowing out a human being so completely. It takes even longer for the effects to show in the bearing, on the face. And both the Doctor and Clara saw Louis' nothingness at first glance. What does that tell you, then, about the depth of his evil?

That first day, at the school, he said nothing of any real note. More than once, Clara asked him if he was waiting for a child. He dodged that question. Gave her the distinct feeling he was waiting solely for her, and that speaking with her was the only reason for his present. They talked about the music she was listening to and the shoes she was wearing. He tried, more than once, to make her talk about the kids.

"He would smile," she says, from behind a nasty memory. "Right when I was getting most suspicious, right when I was about to start getting angry, those moments, he would _smile._ I think he's some sort of mind reader."

"No."

"You weren't _there_, Doctor-"

"If he could read minds he would have known I was only pretending I knew who he was." More likely, he's a _cold_ reader. One who is highly practiced in reading body language and expressions and all the minute signals a person gives off. One who has studied human behaviour; perhaps in order to mimic it better. "Go on. What happened then?"

"Well, nothing, right away. The bell rang and the kids came running out. I looked round for them and when I turned back… he'd vanished."

It was the _next_ day, she explains, which really worried her. The _next_ day, he met her as she left the house on that same run.

"I forgot my phone," she said, and wanted to run back and fetch it. Run back to the house and call the police and hide. But he spoke to her. She'd make herself late for the children. What would she need her phone for anyway? She'd last half an hour without it. And Clara found herself thinking that yes, this was true, she'd be fine, why would she need it? He went on talking. They walked peacefully, most amiably, together to the school gates. Maybe, she started to think, she had misjudged him. Maybe he was just odd. Making conversation. He was wry and witty and Clara found herself laughing even.

Then, right before the bell rang, "Miss Oswald?"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to need you to deliver me the Doctor. Tomorrow night. That little park we passed a few corners back. Eight p.m."

Clara says she panicked. The Doctor smiles at her when she's not looking, beaming with benevolence and pride. It's not true. She didn't panic. She was scared, yes, to the very heart of her, but she did not panic. She was brave and strong enough to say, "I don't know where he is."

"Find him," Louis insisted.

"It's not like I can just whistle and he'll come to me."

"You would have had to whistle very loudly," the Doctor agrees, "and for a very long time. And possibly whilst travelling faster than the speed of light."

"Well, that's sort of what I was trying to tell him, I think! But he wouldn't listen. I would deliver you, he said. I'd be right there and I'd be bringing you with me and… Doctor, he kept saying all that. But he wasn't looking at me. The whole time, he wouldn't take his eyes off the school. I didn't know what to do. I was just so frightened and I didn't know what to do. There was you, but then there were the kids to consider as well. That's why I was teaching them your number. So you could come and help them if something happened to me."

His hearts swell, breaking for her. Not so that he could come and help _her_. So that he could come and protect her charges. Just the thought, just reliving it, there are tears in Clara's eyes. "Oi," he says, "Oi, c'mere," and pulls her into a new and tighter hug. "Silly thing, listen to me. Whoever, whatever and whatever-desiring sort of a thing that this Louis is, he is currently eighty-three years and thousands of miles away from Angie and Artie. And you, for your part, are with me, which is just as good. I won't let anything happen to you, Clara. You don't have to try and save everyone anymore, alright?"

After that, he waits. In a moment, what will happen is that Clara will crush away all of this nastiness. She'll put it aside to be dealt with later in small, manageable chunks of trauma. It will go to bed, and she'll spring back, chirpy and bright and ready for the fray. She'll say something breezy. Be dead feisty, and inspiring. The Doctor will want to leap into action.

He waits one whole biscuit for this revelation, and most of a cup of tea. Nothing happens.

So he slides his elbow in beneath her arm, just grazing her ribs. "Do you want to know what's in 2086?"

"I'm really hoping you're not going to put on your big stupid grin and say 'naff all', because I don't want to have annoyed that man."

"It's not 'naff all'. Far from it." _Something_ starts to edge back in. Not joy or excitement precisely, but _something_. A glow, if not a flame. "Currently stored away for your intrigue and pleasure in the year 2086, are a vast alien intelligence which believes it's a witch from 15-something-or-other-"

"Another vast alien intelligence? Better be a nice one this time…"

"-A young-old-ageless man who's had his soul all but removed-"

"_Again_? This 'soul' business is turning into a theme."

"-And a one-time assassin who's just finished uni."

"Oh, how _is_ Jessica these days?"

The Doctor laughs. With his arm still hanging around her shoulders it's no chore to pull her tight against him just once more. "While I'm _tremendously_ sorry it's put you in harm's way, you were clearly born to live the companioning life."


	8. With Me

The creature named Louis is _not_ waiting for them immediately outside the Tardis.

Which is nice. Maybe he's got his years mixed up. Maybe his temporal transport, whatever it is, is unreliable. Maybe it broke down and he's lost tumbling through the vortex, will be for all eternity, and they'll never have to worry about him again. That would be terribly nice. But just to be certain, they ought to wait around a while. Give him a chance. Should he show up, they'll deal with it.

Should he fail to show up, the Doctor will take Clara home, and with the Tardis cloaked out of sight, he will stay within whistling distance until quite sure that her ordeal is over.

If Louis shows up then, he'll know better than to show his face. There's only so many times you can get a thing wrong before it just becomes undignified. And there's only so many times you can come after one of the Doctor's friends before he becomes very angry indeed.

Still, for now it seems that Virginia is safe. It is not, however, without questions.

"I don't understand," the Doctor says. "I left them right here."

Clara is quiet just long enough to have thought about this. Then, "Left them? Doctor, did you abandon people in a strange place outside their own time?"

"I had just received an unequivocal message that you were in grave danger. I didn't know what I was walking into."

"And now you can't find them?"

"They were _right_ here."

"And one of them is Jessica?"

"…I know I'm not helping my case, but you should know the other one is just as bad."

He looks for them, up and down and across the street. He did have _one_ idea where they might be, but the hotdog stand has closed up shop and been wheeled home for the night. Then, up from the gutter, a breeze catches a piece of old newspaper and wraps it around his ankle. It looks grubby, soft. A couple of days being blown about and trampled on.

The front page headline is about a hurricane in 2013. It's the paper that came up out of the pit with the hollowed man. Which was pristinely preserved, and is now a couple of days old.

Louis might not be the one with faulty, unreliable travel technology.

River once told him about a thing called a 'news sandwich'. It's a psychological trick for delivering bad news. By sandwiching it between two bits of good news, it comes to feel less important. It has never, ever worked for him. So maybe, just maybe, it will work the other way round. The Doctor organizes his thoughts and turns to Clara. "The bad news is, we're going to have to find them. The good news is, I've figured out we're just a day or two late. The bad news is, that Louis fellow might be thinking we tried to trick him."

…No. No, it's not working. From the anxious, knotty feeling in his stomach, it's not working on him. From the look on Clara's face it's not working on her either. Somehow it's worse than making up a good thing to go on the other side. No, this is awful. He looks at Clara and regrets the whole endeavour. She's worried now. He had calmed her and she's worried again.

Worried, but she has the wherewithal to say, "You tried to do the news thing again, didn't you?"

"Oh, we've been through that before."

"You explained it to me once, so that I would understand how sorry you were that you couldn't think of a second piece of good news. It went something like, '_Good news, Strax is here_,' and then, _'Bad news, he's lost his sense of self and all memory of the pact so he's acting a bit more Sontaran than usual_' and then you couldn't think of anything."

He nods. Not because he remembers, but because ti makes sense for him to have forgotten. As one might surmise from Clara's synopsis, he had other things on his mind. That was an interesting Easter. He should tell it to you sometime. Exploding eggs.

"Come on," he tells her, trying to change the subject. "They couldn't be too difficult to find."

Clara nods, agreeing. "And more considerate than you, too."

The Doctor neither agrees, nor is happy, not understands what the two facts have to do with each other. She nods over his shoulder. There, stuck to a lamppost, nailed down with a little end of blue stake, is a note handwritten on another piece of the newspaper. The intricate cursive has to be Lizzie's, though she's more used to a quill; a black felt-tip trembled in her hand.

"Doctor," he reads aloud. For Clara's benefit, not just because he likes the sound of his own name, scout's honour. "On Jessica's advice we have decided to accompany the unfortunate victim from the collapsed tunnel to the place of…" And here he trails off. Lizzie's language is refreshingly elegant. But Jessica, having been able to make head nor tail of it, has left her own words chalked on the pavement. He walks backward over those and reads them. "_Goes to hospital Doctor_. Oh, yes, that's much better. And look, she's put a little smiley face on the end. See, Elizabeth is relaying a _message_, information. Jessica is a _communicator_. Four words, everything I need to know, and the smiley face so I know they're not angry at me."

"_Jessica_ isn't angry." Clara had taken the note from him when he forgot it. Frowning at it, "_Elizabeth_ might be a little bit annoyed."

"Oh, there's a P.S., isn't there?"

"Shall I read it to y-?" She stops. Doesn't trail off like he did, but just stops. The Doctor stops smiling back at the face on the pavement and looks up. There, not inches from Clara's face, is a hovering robot. Light flashes over her face as it scans for her identity. "Doctor?"

"Police drone. Don't worry, he's friendly. Provided you have no outstanding arrest warrants, parking tickets, anything like that. Although, those I.D. scans are supposed to take less than a second. Clara, you haven't done anything illegal since we landed, have you?"

"_No_!" she balks.

"Just checking."

"How could I possibly have done anything illegal, I am a half-step outside the Tardis I've done nothing but talk to you, which might make me mad but certainly not a criminal and-"

"I was just checking, twisty-knickers." But really, she must have done something, because now the little lights are turning red. Certainly, that's not a good thing. Red lights are seldom a good thing. Green lights which become red are almost _never_ a good thing. "Oh! Oh, you don't exist."

"Beg pardon?!"

"You're 70-odd years out of date and you're not from round here." The Doctor leaps across to her, slings an arm around her shoulders and pushes his face up next to hers, making sure he draws the attention of the scanners by sticking his tongue out, wiggling his nose. "Bleh, look at me, I'm weirder than she is, look how weird I am, look, bleugh."

From the corner of her mouth, "What are you doing?"

"Hoping the truce between UNIT and the Roswell lot has held out until now. If it knows who I am – _and look, she's with me!_ – it might not make an official report. Lot of paperwork, very dull, no time for that." Even as he describes it, the lights switch back from red to green. Which is almost always a good thing, and even more so in this case. The drone calms down, lifts up in the air, and goes back about its hovering business.

As they step back into the Tardis for the short hop to hospital, Clara pauses, grumbling, "Does this mean I can't go anywhere without you, while we're here?"

"Yes."

He allows his answer to remain just that simple. She doesn't need to know the details. It's nothing to do with the drone. Now that she's been logged, now that the system knows he brought her here, she's in no danger. Unless she does something illegal, but they covered that. She can't go anywhere without him because there is a dangerous force wandering around somewhere that wants her.

Louis, whatever he is, could have come after the Doctor from any angle. There have been so many dozens of people in his lifetimes, hundreds of them, thousands, that had some sort of access. A great number of them would have had no problem at all giving him up into enemy hands.

There is only one conclusion to draw – gaining the Doctor was less important to the creature than was gaining him from Clara.

So no, she can't go anywhere without him, because he's not letting her out of his sight.

* * *

[Sorry – this is short and nothing happens. But I wanted to post something before Xmas so that I could wish you all a merry one, and thank you very much for being here for me the last few weeks. I really needed to come back to FFnet and all you and your kind words. Much love – Sal.

P.S. If it helps, after Christmas there'll be action and confrontation, a minor demon named Toffee being nasty to the Doctor and an unusual use for a Chameleon Arch, and it's going to be wicked class. Provided, of course, y'all still want me.]


	9. Where Two Roads Meet

It seemed such a relatively simple plan. Get to hospital, find Jessica and Elizabeth, catch up on everything that's going on. It's not even a plan, it's the prelude to the events that will inevitably lead to disasters requiring plans.

The Doctor isn't the sort of man to panic, but a little twitter goes through his hearts at the thought – if he can't even manage his preludes anymore, what's going to happen when it comes the time for plans? If his prelude can be ruined by one gargantuan nurse in concrete-grey scrubs the size of a small garden marquee refusing to let him through one little door, what can he expect next time there's an entire planet in danger?

Clara sighs, "Just show him your magic I.D. thing."

"I don't have it."

"What?"

"I was caught in a police cordon and Jessica did it for me. I assume that's how she got in, Elizabeth hanging off her, no doubt, not a one of them thinking to wait for me and-"

"Wait," the mammoth nurse interrupts. He's suddenly nervous, running a hand over his thin hair, licking his thick lips. "You're… You're here with Agent Apple, Agent Goode?" _Oh so they're _agents_ now!,_ he thinks. It feels like frustration. If you were to suggest to him maybe he's a bit annoyed that he's _not_ an agent, he'd… he might even have to agree with you. "They did say they were waiting for an assistant…"

"_Assistant_!" the Doctor balks, but the nurse is lifting a phone, and Clara's elbow shoves sharply into his ribs. "Yes, yes, that's us, assistants, no question about it."

"We assist," Clara helps.

"We have made an art of assisting. In fact you might say I have a doctorate in it." This last comment earns him another jab, leaves him wondering just how many elbows Clara's bony arms contain.

There's a brief, hushed conversation on the phone while the nurse takes instructions. Then he wedges his enormous bulk out of his chair and moves in rolling steps towards the sealed doors behind him. "You need to understand," he says, punching in a code, "beyond this point you're in a government quarantine zone. Anything you see or experience is strictly confidential. Anything you catch is at your own risk. And, given you're their assistants I'm sure you already know this, but I'm under orders to tell everybody – the Special Agents are in charge of the operation, nobody breathes up there without running it past them."

"Have you _met_ th-_Ow_!? Alright, that was definitely a third elbow, Clara, where are you keeping them?"

"It's the same one, it's just overworked."

There's a cursory inspection of their hands and the soles of their shoes, and a long couple of floors packed into the corners of a lift around the nurse. "I have met them, actually," he says. "And they're nicer than any other federal types we've ever had in here."

"I'll bet they are."

"Doctor, I may be too far from you to jab you again, but shut up."

The nurse continues, "They know my name when I bring people up." Before they part, the mirrored inside of the lift doors show the warm, glowing smile on his face. A smile spreads across the Doctor's face too. How can he stay annoyed, with his wonderful friends doing him proud like that? "Just out of interest," the nurse adds, turning onto the sterile corridor, "how do you communicate with Agent Apple? Is it notes, sign language? I couldn't get to the bottom of it."

The Doctor, once he has checked that Clara's brow is furrowed up too, begins to beg the man's pardon. But there isn't a chance. The corridor splits, one branch straight ahead, another making a sharp right. Then they both turn again, boxing in a room which is all glass and observation and instruments and beeping machines. From experience, the Doctor might expect this environment to be busy, hiving, full of people. Here, however, there is a surprising level of calm. Two attendant doctors in their long white coats are making notes from beyond the windows.

Looking into the room itself, he hardly notices at first that Clara's breath is stopped in her throat, and she's staring at the object of all this attention.

The young man has been cleaned of the dust and debris from the pit and put to bed. That's all to be expected, although the granny-square blanket tucked in around him does not look like hospital issue. Nor, for that matter, are a lot of the medicines and accoutrements laid out on the benches. There are lot of things lying around that look like twigs and mud and sorts of moss. Then there's Lizzie, going amongst these things, treating them all with equal respect.

"Clara, these are, respectively, the young man and the suspected witch I've been telling you about."

"Right." That should have cleared everything up. But her brow is still knit, and she's still staring. He looks at her, waiting for the follow-up question. She shakes her head when she notices, "Nothing, nothing…" She's still thinking far too hard for his liking. He keeps watching. Clara shakes her head again, "No, you won't like it."

"Won't like what?"

"I get nervous when I know Jessica's around somewhere and I can't see her."

"Go up on your tiptoes."

The little extra height lets her see across the body of the sleeping man. There, on the other side of the bed, looking up at the ceiling, lips moving faster than a nun going through a rosary, is Jessica. "Oh. Yes, now I feel better. What's she doing?"

"Not a clue. Let's get in and ask her."

The seals on the door hiss as they're released. The tiny room, no longer soundproof, spills glorious noise into the hall; a mess of machine sound and The Beatles on the radio and Lizzie talking to herself and her plants. Somewhere underneath all this is a tiny current of whispering, which stops as soon as Jessica's head picks up from the pillow. Whispering, then. Apparently she was whispering. Now she's on her way across the room, in about three steps and as many seconds, to hug the Doctor around the ribs, flinging out an arm for Clara too.

Over the top of her head, the Doctor looks to Lizzie. She points at the radio, "I know this song," then at a cardiac monitor, "and I know what that does."

"You _will_ get used to that."

"It's been nearly three days."

"Well, it's a lot to get used to. And _you_!" He prises Jessica from him, so quickly she forgets to let go of Clara and almost drags her over. "Why aren't you talking to anybody? And I warn you, if you say anything less convincing and evidenced than laryngitis, I'll… I'll think of a semi-threatening threat."

"Is being easier. Not questions her then. Talks for SleepyAdam, though. Is telling histories, so that him am not to be gets confused when is wakes up."

Lizzie smiles to a potted amaryllis, "I keep having to correct her. It's turning the years 2013-2086 into my specialist subject."

Clara goes to the empty body. She murmurs the new name, 'Adam', and she murmurs the year of his hollowing out. The Doctor watches her but, since Lizzie seems to be the one with all the information, he has a few more questions for her. "Anything on the patient?"

She sways her head, "Still don't know what's the matter with him, if it can be fixed, how to fix it. We were waiting for you."

"That's kind of you. Why?"

"…I had this _wild_ notion you might know more than us."

"Never more than you."

Lizzie rolls her eyes. "You keep _saying_ things like that. We did find one thing that might help, I suppose." From the messes on her bench, she pulls out a small white card and passes it to him. "A business card. Same era as the newspaper. There's a fingerprint on it which doesn't belong to Adam."

The Doctor doesn't need to know about the fingerprint. He doesn't need to know anything, from the moment he looks at the card.

"Clara."

She glances back, then takes it from him. Reads aloud, "Louis Sieverts. Doctor, you don't think-"

"Yes, I do."

She points at the man under the crochet blanket. "And this… this happened… in the year we just left. Doctor, did-?"

"Yes. Actually, that's the question I was answering the first time. Surprised it took you two stages to get there. Stay here, keep talking to Adam. Lizzie, do what you do, keep trying. Jessica, come with me."

"Where am goes?"

He doesn't have to answer her, she'll follow anyway. And if he can just breeze out of here in one big swoop of his coat, Clara won't have time to question it. Maybe later on she'll remember him telling her that she couldn't go anywhere without him. But that will keep her here. That will keep her in a government quarantine zone, behind two air-locked doors, a passworded elevator and a physically and psychologically immovable nurse.

And thinking all of this, he thinks of something else. Turns so quickly that Jessica almost treads on his toes with stopping and tells her, "No. On second thoughts, you stay here. In case you're needed to protect the patient."

She looks up, blue eyes gone honest and wide, "But who am then to be protecting Doctor?"

He grabs her into a hug. Pretending just to be grateful and happy with her but while he has her close and no one else can hear he hisses the truth; "Jessica, Clara could be in massive danger. She doesn't know it and you mustn't let her, but I want you to be her guardian. Just us, big secret, alright?"

She steps back, with a military nod and a small salute. "Right yes. SleepyAdam am being most important objective." While no one can see, she gives a sweetly-exaggerated wink.

He's halfway back to the lift when she figures it out and scatters into the hall, "But where am goes?"

"Doesn't matter," he tells her, knowing the doors will be closed before she can reach him. "Trouble usually finds me."


	10. Glitches

Trouble finds him the moment he sets foot outside the hospital doors. Makes sense, really. With the exception of a few nasty, sticky, Sontaran or samba-dancing type incidents, hospitals have always been safe places. They're not fair game, what with all those sick and vulnerable people being inside them. It makes a degree of sense that evil should have to wait politely outside until he deigns to leave the sanctuary.

He sees it the moment he steps into fresh air. It's not quite the evil he was expecting. It's not nearly so _obvious_ as the evil he was expecting. Had it been this Louis _thing_ waiting for him, he is certain he would have lingered in the lobby, maybe found a nurse to talk to. He might have asked around inside, if anyone had seen anything out of the ordinary, if anyone had been in to ask about him, and all the while knowing that Louis was outside. That's what burning, radiating dark can do.

This is different. This is the sort of evil he can ignore. He clocks it, and then turns away and walks on, to see if it follows.

It won't be hard to tell. Hell, this time, has come to him wearing little wedge-heeled ankle boots. It's come to him wearing a little red dress, and a black jacket. Wearing glossy black hair and big dark eyes and a sweet, round face the same way it wears any other part of its costume. It makes him very angry to see evil wearing this.

After all, what's the point? It's not as if this thing could be trying to trick him. It _knows_, it _must_ know, that he just left Clara up in the quarantine zone. What on Earth could be the point of dressing itself up as Clara?

It is smoking a cigarette too. Did he mention that? It has clothed itself as his dear friend, and trails behind him all heel clicks and the stench of tobacco smoke. The Doctor shoves his hands into his pockets rather than give it the satisfaction of seeing him ball up his fists. He walks on, the very picture of calm, until he hears the hum of a police drone approaching from a side-street. Here he turns, abruptly, and when the Clara-ish thing turns after him, he grabs her by the shoulders and puts her right in the robot's path.

"You're out of your time," he tells her triumphantly, as it lowers its scanners. "This is 2086. Tobacco is a highly-restricted drug, and if I've got my states right its out-and-out illegal here. All commercial fields were destroyed more than thirty years ago. You're in trouble now, Missy." The light of the scanner runs over her face. Then it retracts into the body of the drone, and the machine moves on about its business. "No, hold on," the Doctor calls after it. "That's hardly fair!" He turns back when he hears Clara's laughter. Whatever the shape shifter might be, it is standing on the spot where he left it. Its hand is still turned out, two fingers still curled, but there is nothing between them anymore. There is no butt on the ground, no ash. And, as the Doctor discovers by giving the air all about it a thorough sniff, there is not one trace of the disgusting smell.

"Me?" she giggles, "Smoking?" Gives him that flash of the eyes that Clara can do when she's being very naughty indeed.

The Doctor sighs. If you'd told him, when he woke up this mor… well, the last time he woke up, that he'd spend the day surrounded by a brace of talented ladies, he'd have been very happy indeed. He would have flung himself into that day with zest and blooming gusto. This, however, would not have been what he had in mind.

When you can no longer demand that an unknown party identify itself in accordance with the Shadow Proclamation and the _blah-blah-blah_, so on, so forth, all that, with any conviction or force, that's how you know you've stayed up too late.

"Alright," he says. "Here we go again. What're you, then?"

"Whatever I want to be."

"Then kindly be something else. I'm not sure you know how dangerous it is to walk about grinning at me from Clara's face."

There's no shift, no change, no process of transformation. It is simply that it is Clara, and then it is someone else. For the Doctor, the only shock at all is that suddenly the person in front of him is male. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a strapping young man. "What do you think?" he says. "Will I fit in?" Yes. Yes he will. He's the picture of classic, American perfection, and his accent is flawless. It will fit in absolutely anywhere. Now that the drone is gone, the cigarette is back.

The Doctor has no real reply. Odd; he can't remember the last time he was speechless.

This new-former-college-football-player steps next to the Doctor. As it develops a small fleur-de-lys tattoo behind its ear, it claps a heavy hand, nothing like Clara's, square between his shoulders, where Clara probably couldn't reach very well. "You're tired," he says. The Doctor finds himself starting to nod. Yes. Yes, he's very tired. Too exhausted to argue. Better just go along with all this, for now. "Let's get you a nice, Limey cup'o'tea somewhere, huh?"

Oh yes, yes. Tea sounds like a very good idea.

You know what else sounds like a very good idea? Bringing Jessica with him when he left the quarantine zone, but oh well. Live and learn.

Live and learn. He likes that phrase. In part, it explains why he's so clever. It also explains why he's so stupid sometimes. For instance, the Doctor has never before noticed, but 'live and learn' is only part of that problem. You live and learn, yes.

Then you hope you live long enough to apply the lessons learnt.

"I'm not tired," he says. Perhaps saying it can make it true. The shapeshifter said he was and it came true, so maybe if he just believes it, "I'm not… I'm not _tiii-eeeeyrd_." If the words weren't stretched out around a yawn, it would be easier to believe.

"You work too hard," says the young-man-who-was-formerly-Clara. "Don't be so tough on yourself. All these long, long years? You're getting too old for all this running around."

Yes. Yes, he's very old. Yes, he feels old. Yes, as he glances down, he's having trouble keeping his old, bony fingers curled up into fists. Oh, and look at all those big blue veins across the backs of his knuckles. Were those there earlier? Five minutes ago, was the skin of his hands so thin and papery? Well, after all, he's very old. Maybe he saw them and just forgot.

The Doctor is leaning on the lad's much stronger arm by the time he is guided to a seat outside a little coffee shop. Right in the sun. That's nice. That takes the chill out of his old bones.

But wasn't it night when he went into the hospital? Where is the sunlight coming from?

There's a waitress by the table. He didn't see her walk up. He didn't hear an order being placed and anyway there hasn't been time, but there is tea and cake for him. Coffee for the smoking boy. "How are you feeling? Good to sit down, isn't it?"

"Nice to take the weight off," he agrees automatically. "Yes, most kind. Do try a bit of cake."

"Oh, no thank you. You haven't even touched it."

"I know, and I would like to, but frankly I don't trust you one inch, so after you."

The boy reaches over, pinches off a piece of the crumb and eats it happily. With an easy smile, "Delicious. Don't be so paranoid. Come on. Eat, drink. Enjoy. I'm trying to be a civil host, y'know."

The Doctor picks up the fork from the side of the place. Stretches out with it. It really does look like good cake. Rich and heavy, deep and chocolaty, and the glossy pink sauce on top is just cresting the edge. There's a seed in it. It makes one droplet heavy and draws it temptingly down the side, pooling in the warm, dark sauce of the inside.

But it is too big to be a raspberry seed. Too round and juicy.

He scoops it up on the end of the fork and holds it out the boy. "Pomegranate. You're an educated young man, aren't you? You've read your Greek myths."

"Yeah, you've got me," he laughs. "But honestly, it's just a joke. You can eat it. It's got nothing to do with trapping you in the Underworld, cross my heart."

"No thanks." The Doctor shoves the plate away. The boy shrugs and starts to fill his face.

The Doctor, in the meantime, is thinking very _young_ thoughts. He's thinking of springtime and cartons of juice and playing with Lego bricks. He's thinking of romance, and a girl he knew when he was just a boy, whose name was Alison and who trauma had forced to regenerate at a very early age, leaving her with blue hair and blonde eyes, and who was his first kiss in an empty Temporal Physics classroom. It's working. The warmth and colour are starting to come back into his hands. He keeps them beneath the table, out of sight.

"I'd like to know who you are," he says, and still affects an old man's gruffness on his voice. "Really, I mean. At your core."

The boy shakes his head. "Whoever you want." Before the head has finished shaking, it has changed. It has sunken down to belong to a much shorter body. It is smaller and paler and a great mass of untidy black hair swings behind it. "Really, Doctor, him am having much-many questions can be asking. More-gooder questions." _Better_, Jessica, the word is _better_. He opens his mouth to say this. Then remember what he's really talking to and closes it again. "Please-yes. 'Better' am being one of words that him was saying would always remind her about. Doctor recalls?"

Yes, he recalls. _Better_ is one of them. _Now_ is one of them (though her former _heretimes_ has been almost stamped out). There has been little reason, of late, to correct _Riversing_ to just River, but it's still on the list.

"How do you know that?"

"Knows everything. Her am always doing much researchings before meeting new persons for worktimes. Is knowing all things about Doctor that can be able to be known. Like, by insty-ances, is knowing how much him am wanting to be knowing more about Jessica Apple. Him am feeling much sorry for her, because her am knowing no-things about her hyzz-try. Her am not having any real family-persons. Is being why him am fetching LizzieWitch, right-yes?"

"You're getting the grammar wrong," the Doctor tells it. "It ought to be 'how much him am wants for knows more about Jessica'. 'Wants for knows', see? The closest translation is 'longing for knowledge'. It's really a very high form of language she uses, she just doesn't express it terribly well." The not-Jessica rolls its eyes, sulking. While he's got it on the back foot, the Doctor adds, "And she can pronounce 'history'."

The eyes turn thoughtful. "Right-yes," it mumbles, with mild surprise. "Was to be learning that because of university learnings. All Peace Studying am being studying for history-wars, so that preventing all future wars…"

The Doctor has heard that same tone. New knowledge bubbling up out of a forgotten place. He's heard it recently. "How are you learning all that? And please, answer me out of a less offensive face."

"Him am wants for her being somebody… _harmless_?" She's corrected her grammar, he notices. By the time he's finished noticing, she is no longer a she. Her face is very harmless. Matter of fact, her face is one of the faces you'd like to see when you suspect harm might be done. It's a defender's face, honest and inoffensive and charmingly blank. "Will this do?" it answers, with an empty, puppy dog happiness that makes him almost as angry as having to watch Clara smoke.

"You've got the nose wrong."

"No I haven't. It was definitely this size."

"You have. Whatever picture you learned this stupid imitation from, it was before he ran headlong into Strax's back and broke his nose on the armour."

Pushing an accurate little lump into the long, Roman line of the offending appendage, it chuckles, "That is _so_ me."

"No," the Doctor tells it. He can't keep pretending to be old and exhausted. Too angry to pretend, he gets his old force back. "No. It was _so_ Rory, yes, it was so Rory it was unbelievable, but it was not you. It never could be."

"I'm in character!" it laughs, "Give me a break."

One of the Doctor's secretly restored hands flashes to his pocket, takes out the screwdriver and fires the single most excruciating sound he can possibly imagine into the creature's head. He's heard the Krillitanes all leave the planet when their queen goes into labour, otherwise their skulls might explode. He stops _just_ short of that level of sonic vibration.

The not-Rory-not-Jessica-not-Clara-not-anybody-it-can-make-up falls off its chair away from the table. It lies on the pavement stiff and twisted, silently screaming. For the first time, the Doctor gets to watch it changing. It fights to keep the forms it has already shown him, flowing in and out of outfits and noses and dark glossy hair. But it's in too much pain. Confusion sets in; the wrong faces appear on the wrong bodies. The curves of an ear momentarily contour a shoulder that shouldn't be bear. The cherry end of a cigarette glows in a navel that stretches out into a mouth and tries to cry before the shapeshifter finally gives up.

What is left at the end, curling up on itself, cradling its head, appears to be a human female. This means little; this is only its most accustomed form. This is the factory setting. It has no reality of its own. But this is where it settles. A woman. Floating dress, beaded sandals, red hair braided around its head. A wedding ring on her left hand. Keening, clutching her head.

The Doctor helps her to sit up. "There now. Quiet, and the echoes will stop."

"What was that?!"

"A little trick of my own. Now tell me what to call you and what you want."

"We could have done this the easy way," she tells him. Her more natural voice is almost local, though the drawl is from farther south. "You could have called me anything." She tips up her head to hiss in his ear, "Could've called me River." The claws of the sonic screwdriver pop suddenly open. "Toffee. Toffee Lees, if you have to have a name for me."

The claws close in again. "And my second question?"

"Oh, I don't want anything." She moves away from him. Edges sickly to the curb and pushes herself up, dizzy. But she's recovering her strange powers; over her shoulder, there is now a taxi. Not one second ago it was just an idling car. She backs away from him and there is no traffic where the road was busy before. The cab driver is getting out the open the door for her. "But Mr Sieverts – he's my employer, the two of you met? – he asked me to let you know, as best I possibly could, that if you want to play games, he is more than up for that. Did I let you know that, Doctor? Did I do a good job?"

She starts to fall off her feet. The extra step or two between her and the taxi closes. Her trip puts her right down in her seat. The driver closes the door on her, and takes her away when she waves.

The Doctor watches her disappear. Literally – Toffee Lees decides she doesn't want to be seen anymore, and the shape of her vanishes out of the cab windows.

For a while he sits exactly where he is, cross-legged on the pavement. Briefly closes his eyes and counts.

The witch-slash-intelligence-bank, that's one.

The sleeping-only-more-sort-of-slightly-dead boy from the collapsed tunnel, that's two.

The force of utter evil that went after Clara makes three.

Three is his limit. Three mysteries at once, provided they seem to be connected, that's manageable. Now you add on Toffee, with her prodigious ability to manipulate reality, and the Doctor is beginning to feel really quite unstable. Nothing but uncertainty to stand on, he's starting to get a bit seasick.

No, no, it simply will not do. One of these mysteries has to be solved. Soon. Very soon. Now, in fact. Yes, now. It must be _now_, before he ends up mad.

He sighs.

Then again, he really could use that cup of tea now.


	11. Imagined Luxury

The cab driver can't see her either. He still takes her where she's going, of course. If you asked him he wouldn't know why, and when they get there he will wake, like a sleepwalker, and remember that he was never a cabbie at all to begin with. But he's taking her where she's going. That's all Toffee needs to know. She curls in the back seat and makes her invisible, silent, non-existent. A headache is one of the most difficult things in the world to wish away; the pain itself makes it hard to concentrate on removing it. It takes her most of the trip to the hotel. She steps out on the sidewalk, thanks her driver and throws some money through the window.

That'll be the most perplexing thing for him, when he comes round. She takes some brief little pleasure in knowing that. Can't quite laugh though. She wishes she could.

The hotel is seedy and small. Where she would usually have to force a clerk into changing his questions, accepting her lies, this one hardly even asked any. He gave her the top floor, imagined he took the money she imagined for him, and since then has let her get on with things.

She's weary, though. The thought of all those stairs exhausts her. Normally she doesn't like to cheat, but Toffee thinks herself to the top.

There on the landing, she knows; Louis' arrived. He's here somewhere, waiting for her. Toffee can sense him. The places where his feet have touched the ground and his hands have touched the walls and light switches and door handles have a greasy glow to her. She knows what that touch looks like. She knows how it feels and what it does and how hard it is to remove.

She shakes her head clear and steps into the room she's been using the most. Single bed, single dresser, decrepit little bathroom off the corner. One wall is covered in research into the Doctor of this time. Recent associates and losses, who he's got with him, how he's getting on these days. The room has been serving her well.

Now it's got Louis in it. He's sitting by the window, and at the side of his chair is a long, gift-wrapped box. But he looks up at her first. Waves his hand around to indicate their surroundings and simply dismisses them, "This won't do."

She rolls her eyes. "How'd I guess you'd say that?" Toffee thinks away the walls that divide the rooms. She enlarges the windows and puts a deep carpet on the floor, hangs a small chandelier over the top of the stairwell. She hides her research behind a silk tapestry. The hard plastic chair he's sitting on becomes deep velvet. As Louis settles into it he points around, gives instructions. The mirror should be full length. The closet should be walk-in. He wants a painting on a certain bare wall.

"And why-oh-why, my dear," he smiles and she shudders, "are there still separate beds in this fine new home of ours?"

For the thousandth time if it's once, "You are _not_ my husband."

The smile goes out of him. Cold and unequivocal, "Change it."

Toffee breathes deep. She tries, she really does, but succeeds in doing no more than putting the two carved mahogany frames post to post. Shuts her eyes, holds her head and tries again. "I can't. I have to be able to want a thing to change."

"So want it."

She narrows her eyes at him and falls onto the fine couch that matches his armchair. "I'll try again in a while. That Doctor, he… I'm just not at my best right now."

But Louis doesn't even seem to hear her. Whether it's an excuse or not, whether she's lying or not, he just misses it entirely. He's still got corrections for her and says, very much as though she's beginning to test his patience, "_Toffee_." She glances up. This time he points at her. Starts at the top of her head, points right down to her feet and all the way back up again. "_Change_." No. This is her. This is her favourite dress, her favourite shoes. Her favourite hair and eyes and shape. No, no she won't. But when he picks up the giftwrapped box and hands it to her, he says, "The old fashioned way, if you please," and she has no choice.

Toffee takes the box into the now luxurious bathroom and turns to close the door. He's already standing in frame, however. And so she goes about undoing the bow and taking off the lid. The dress inside is undoubtedly very beautiful. Not exactly appropriate for lying around the hotel, or even for going out except to some gala. But if that's what he wants. She hangs it up on the shower rail while she brushes out her hair, delaying the act of actually undressing as long as possible.

"I met with the Doctor," she says. Officious and businesslike, the sound of her voice makes her feel like she's still, in some small way, in control. "He's aware of our presence, and my powers, and I believe I was able to put him very much on the back foot. "

Louis pushes away her hair, stroking the back of her neck, "I knew you wouldn't disappoint me."

Well, she thinks darkly, you've got a way of knowing that. With the same cool remove she continues, "If you care at all to look at the reading I've done for this, you'll see we can't target him with selfishness. He won't give you _anything_ for his own ends. But he's an easy martyr. He's used to it. He does it all the time. Best way to get to him is through his friends."

"You told me that before." Louis is at the hanging dress. The scratch of his undoing the zipper is to let her know, she can't avoid it forever. "And I can only imagine how _delightful_ it'll feel to take the young Miss Oswald's innocent, glorious soul for my own."

Toffee is testing new eyelashes to match her new look. Between bold and dramatic and long and soft, she puts both hands on the edge of the sink and leans over. "I don't think Oswald's the answer. She's so… _brave_. We might just end up making things more difficult for ourselves."

He's now holding the ice-blue gown open, waiting for her. Her eyes meet his in the mirror and she sighs, starts to untie her beaded belt. Louis's lip curls at the rattle of it. "However did you end up wearing that old thing again?"

She's so glad he asked. If she can close her eyes and tell him facts, it's so much easier to forget how much of her skin is on display when she steps out of her old favourite kaftan. "The Doctor. There's a device, I don't know if you're aware of it. Sonic screwdriver, he calls it. Ain't like no screwdriver I ever saw, though-"

"Please, Toffee, make _some_ attempt to speak properly."

"He projected a noise into my head. Broke me open. _This old thing_," and she is just kicking it from the end of her foot, "is my square one."

He comes close with his _new_ thing. She turns to snatch it off him, before he can try and help her into it, before he can lay a finger on her. She grabs it, gathers it against herself. But he reaches out and strokes her face with a crooked finger. "You're alright, I trust?" Or that might be what he says. She's not sure. He touches her and she hears screaming, sobbing. A sensation like blood trickling where his skin meets hers. And eternal loss. As though she had known utter bliss, and had it taken away.

Toffee pulls away, "I'm fine. Don't worry, it won't happen again. I know what it looks like, I know where he keeps it. I'll disappear it next time I have to meet him."

"That's my girl."

Defiantly, "Who is?" She steps into the dress. Arches her back away from him so he won't touch her when he lifts the zipper. Turns around, "There. Will I do now? Can we have an actual conversation about the task at hand now?" She gives herself a new layer of skin along the jaw. It's the only thing that can take away the itch of contact with him. But it's an eye blink, a little moment of isolation, if she wants to alter herself. When her eyes open again he's glaring at her. Too much. She argued with him, pushed him. And it seems he's just not in the mood to let her away with that today.

Louis puts out his hand. She'd cry, except she can't give him that satisfaction. It's an old trick. The same way you make a treat appear from behind a child's ear, he reaches behind hers and produces a small glass vial. Inside, an incredibly light, fine gold sand. "No," she keens, as he twists out the cork. Then louder, more meaningful, "No," and she grabs at his wrist, not caring what it feels like to take hold of him.

But Toffee isn't strong enough. He pushes out over the sink and begins to turn his hand. The sand slips, threatening, easing towards the mouth of the vial. "No!" she screams. "You can't!"

Louis grins, sudden white teeth, like a skull, "Oh, can't I?"

"You keep pouring him down sinks, you won't have nothing left to hold over my head!" He taps the vial with just one finger. The merest scatter of the precious dust drops over the glass lip and clings around the plug. "_Anything_!" Toffee yells, correcting herself, "Anything, you won't have anything to hold over me." She changes her grip on him. Both hands wrap around his fist and try to meet each other, balled up like a prayer. "Put him away. Please, please, put the cork back in it, put him away. We don't need to have a conversation. You don't have to do a thing. I'll get you the Doctor. I'll get him. I'll get you every last drop."

He tips the vial just a millimetre more, "Is that a promise?"

"It's a vow."

He holds her gaze until he is quite convinced that she's suffered. Then corks the vial, and makes it disappear again. As close as she watches, Toffee can't see where he puts it. If only she could. This would all be over if only she could.

Just to get away from him, she darts down, picking her dress up from the floor. But it was never real. Now that she's not wearing it, now that there's nothing to concentrate on, it vanishes away from her fingers like mist. Louis hardly even seems to notice.

"Good girl," he says. "Now see if you can't do something about those beds."

He walks out, leaves her there. If he expects her to fall down crying, it's the last thing he'll ever get. Toffee stands tall, straightens her shoulders. She flicks her hand; the two beds come together with an almighty crash and comes down fused. She can take the sight of it, kingsize now. She can take it when he laughs.

Not long to go. Just this one last soul. Just the Doctor, and it's over. Just the Doctor, and she's bought that jar back. Just the Doctor, and Toffee gets back everything she's lost. Just the Doctor. Simple as that. Just the Doctor. No damn problem.


	12. Hidden In The Joke

Back at the hospital, the Doctor leans back in at the quarantine room. First things first, he looks at Lizzie, "How's the patient?"

She shrugs, "No change. And I'm not sure I can change him." The Doctor nods. He was expecting that.

Had Adam, while he was out meeting the strange Mrs Lees, decided to get up, wipe the sleep from his eyes and do a little dance, that would have been something off his plate. That would have been _very_ nice. That's why he's not surprised. Nothing is ever that easy. He's got a big, tangled, knotty, complicated problem to deal with, and it's just too much to ask for that one of the big, tangled, knotty, complicated strands within it would have just vanished.

"Sorry," he says to Lizzie. "I promise you, you are one of the single most useful creatures ever to grace this planet. I've just happened to bring you somewhere where you can't be of use. I didn't mean to make you feel bad."

"I don't-"

"Oh good," he looks away, opening his mouth to call for Jessica.

Lizzie cuts him off, "-But could we speak? Just you and I?" He looks back. This time, he looks properly. This time, he really sees her.

In her own time, Lizzie would have been considered a fully grown woman. Her community, while it never fully accepted her, had respected her until recently. She'd done rather well for herself, while her mother had lived. She'd been doing well for herself alone until they decided to burn her. In her own time, Lizzie's talents were appreciated. More importantly, they were limited. How could she ever access her knowledge of 21st century medical equipment without access to 21st century medical equipment? In her own time, Lizzie knew what she was and she knew where the boundaries were. He took that away from her, and left her in this room to play the nurse.

"Of course," the Doctor tells her gently. He gives her his hand and the two of them step into the hall. He's got his mildest face on. It's his 'listening' face. It's his 'No, River, I'm not messing about anymore, I'm paying attention to you' face. It's his 'Please don't hit me again' face, in related circumstances. He's _here_. She is _all_ he cares about, right in this especial moment. "What was it you wanted to talk about?"

"Nihilium."

"Oh." Not her temporal and cultural displacement then. He takes his listening face off and puts on his 'joy of science' face.

Yes, there's a face for the joy of science. When _you_ have reached a millennium and a half in age, _you_ will have a face for everything too. "Well, fire away, then, Liz, I could talk about this for _hours_ if you want." Lizzie flounders, a little stuck. "Start at the very beginning," he smiles.

She mumbles in reply, "_It's a very good place to start_." Mumbles it tunefully, too, catching up on that.

"Tell me what you know."

"It's an element," she begins. "The finest and lightest element there is, which is why it took humanity so long to discover it." These are all facts that the Doctor already knows. He nods along, confirming for her that she's on the right tracks. "It composes those parts of a person that we had always thought of as the _soul_ – the love, the memory, the self, the personality. The immortality and individuality of any creature is contained within its nihilium stores."

"All of this is absolutely true."

"I've been speaking with both Jessica and Clara, and they've both had experience with nihilium, with the damage and extraction and the content of it."

"This too is true," he nods, but raises one finger in warning, "though _something_ of a sore subject with them. Jessica especially. She was a tiny bit dead for a minute due to depleted nihilium stocks."

But Lizzie's not finished. That wasn't the point she wanted to make. She's coming to that now and she's not going to stop until she's told him, "There's a thriving black market trade in extracted souls and yours is on the most wish-lists, demanding the highest prices."

After that, there's a little bit of quiet. He wasn't _quite_ expecting her to come off with that. Not that he's _shocked_. When one is terribly clever and terribly old and has been absolutely everywhere (except for what's beyond a small meteor belt in the Destry nebula. He doesn't know why. It just looks dark and uninviting over there and he's never chanced it), it seems only reasonable that one's immortal self should be in great demand. It's just that he had expected her to be a little more, well… _tactful_ about it.

"Lizzie, this might not seem like the time, but there's a thing called foreknowledge, and you're really not allowed to give it out."

She shakes her head, "There is nothing 'fore' about this. It's now. These records, the ones in my head, the ones I can draw on… Whatever they are, they're telling me this appertains to you _here and now_."

Oh. Jolly good. There's something else to add to his plate. Balancing on the edge, like a slice of toast on the edge of a motorway services fry-up, the kind you can't balance and the beans are always sliding everywhere, and the _strangest_ parts of you end up with tomato sauce on them_. _In the interests of preventing a nervous breakdown, really rather unadvisable at his age, the Doctor forces himself not to think of this as another part of the mystery. Rather, this is obviously a tool for cracking mysteries open.

In a breathy, small sort of way, he begins to laugh. Lizzie's eyes widen. Cautiously, "Doctor?"

"Oh, don't worry. Not having a nervous breakdown. Actively taking steps to prevent that. No, I… Promise you won't laugh at me?"

"Why should I, when you clearly find yourself so amusing?"

She's wonderful, isn't she? He knew he was going the right thing, when he went to find her. She's wry and hard and knowing. She's delightful and he laughs a little louder. "I thought you wanted to talk because you're alone and in a strange world and full of new powers. I thought you needed me. And here you are warning me of the looming danger to my higher self."

She raises one eyebrow. She understands what he's saying, of course. But she still doesn't find it all that funny. "This seems a little more important, don't you think?"

"I wouldn't blame you."

"When the time comes that I need to talk about that-"

"I'll be here," he says, and means it. Meaning it helps to straighten his face. He gets up from leaning on his knees, clears his throat. "For now, however, you couldn't have a little poke around that big supercomputer brain of yours for me, and have a look for a name?" She nods and he gives it to her. Missus Lees, he says, but if the married name doesn't work, how many Toffees can there be in history?

Lizzie pulls a hank of hair down over her shoulder, running it over and over through her hands. A little habit. He likes it. So much more fun than asking a normal computer. Much more friendly than a loading bar, don't you think? She really is very ginger, you know. Proper carroty orange bright celtic ginger. He's almost disappointed when he sees her mouth open and knows he's about to get an answer. "There's nothing." Well, now he really _is_ disappointed. But she hasn't let go of her hair yet, and her brow is still furrowed. "Or there _could_ be, but it's being buried."

"What do you mean 'buried'?"

"Mrs Toffee Lees," she echoes to him. "It's a pun. There's an Earth myth, about a man named Faustus? He sells his soul to the devil. The demon who manages the transaction and oversees Faustus' time on Earth is named Mephistopheles. Missustoffeelees. The joke disguises her."

The Doctor is frozen. He knew that. He knew the story. He knew the name of the demon. To put it simply, he got the joke. And yet, until Lizzie said it just now, it hadn't occurred to him. The sensation is strange, disjointed. It makes him a touch uncomfortable and _that_ is what gets to him most, because after all these years there is very little that can make the Doctor's skin creep.

Lizzie looks into his glassy stare and he snaps to attention. "If you think of anything-" he begins.

"It used you," she breathes. "I see it." She picks up one of his hands, studying an aged liver spot he hasn't been able to get rid of. When she touches his forehead, there's a slough of dead skin to brush away; the wrinkles Mrs Lees gave him. "The demon, Doctor, it… it got to you."

"That's why I need you to keep trying for me. Anything you've got, anything you can dredge up. The silliest thing could be vital, so tell me _everything_ you come to learn."

"But how do you intend to fight something that can change your actual _self_? If it aged you, couldn't it kill you? Couldn't it will you out of existence?"

He turns his hand over and holds hers tightly, "That's why I need to know all I can, and really, Lizzie, _what on Earth is going on in there_?"

Not what he meant to say. He meant to tell her he appreciates that this must be difficult, that he's grateful, and that there's no pressure.

But just through the soundproof glass he can see Jessica grinning, bobbing her head side to side as she chants something. Clara, meanwhile, looks straight-backed and utterly indignant. The Doctor watches the red blush rise out of her collar. It's approaching her ears, shooting right for the hairline, when he pushes open the door to interrupt.

"…_sitting up in tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g, first am coming love, then is being-"_

"Jessica Apple!" he snaps, shocked and disappointed with her, "Is that what they're teaching you at university these days? What on Earth do you think you're doing?"

"Claraperson am having much big fancy-feelings for him."

The Doctor straightens his lapels and tries not to let himself puff up too much. "Yes, well, that's hardly a cause for laughter, now, is it? After all, who could blame her? And shame on you for teasing the poor girl over what she can't have."

"Not _him_-"

"Oh."

"With SleepyAdam. Was saying is much handsome."

The red has reached Clara's temples, and is being swiftly followed by the next shade down, "I never did!"

"Yes-did. Yes-did and says was being much 'cute in sleeps'." Jessica loses herself in another bout of giggling, rolls sideways, almost off her chair.

The Doctor bites in his lip. Mumbles through it, definitely not laughing, not even starting to laugh, "Clara, that's a coma patient at best, what are you thi-" The word does not get to be completed. But he doesn't laugh. He just has to close his mouth very hard to keep it in. He tries to beckon Jessica, but her eyes are shut. Eventually he has to go and get her, picking her up by the shoulder and pushing her out of the room ahead of him.

The last thing he hears, before the soundproof door closes, is Lizzie telling Clara, "If I can get him awake, I'll make sure you're the first face he sees."

The Doctor and Jessica lose the first minute of their private conference hissing and breathless, laughing themselves into silence, until she tries to lean on him and the full weight of her comes down on his toe. "No, no, this'll never do," he decides at that moment. "We're being awfully mean and anyway, ouch."

"Much sorry."

"Don't be. But make it up to me."

All of a sudden, she is straight and serious as a soldier. She's earnest, devoted, snaps out, "Right-yes, Doctor."

"Do you remember you used to do quite a bit of sneaking and spying?"

Jessica looks at her shoes. In her tiniest voice, "For bad-Owner and bad-Silents. Yes, Doctor."

He tips up her chin, "For me and River too. And much appreciated you were. But I need you to do it again."

"Her am guards Clara, though."

"Oh, I think I can manage a shift with her. I'll think very sad thoughts the whole time and hopefully manage not to offend her." Jessica begins to protest; that wasn't what she meant. She doesn't, please, doubt that he can protect Clara much-well, but just feels she's slightly more qualified for bodyguard duties. She has prior experience in that too. The Doctor blithely ignores every word, takes her under his arm and starts her toward the lift. When she is quite finished giving her argument, he tells her precisely what he needs her to do.

* * *

[A/N – Like Lizzie says, Clara and Jessica have both run afoul of nihilium-based nastiness before, in the stories 'Memento Vivere' and 'No Place for Scholars' respectively. Or you can just take Lizzie's word for it. She knows a lot of stuff, after all.]


	13. A Little Bit of a Lie Except Not Really

Once he has dispatched Jessica (by her own admission, his best-always-scout) on her top secret mission, he turns his attention to Clara. Lets himself back into the quarantine room, props the door open with a fire extinguisher. She's sitting on a borrowed office chair by the bed, determinedly not looking at Adam anymore. Trying to be kind, and to make up for laughing, the Doctor says, "It really is better if you keep talking to him. He has only the tiniest scrap of humanity left to keep him alive. And it seems to be a bright and happy scrap, but we'd do well to nurture it all the same."

"Hard to know what to say," she murmurs. "Jessica was telling him history. It's not as though I can pick up with that."

"We found a newspaper with him that said 2013. Catch him up on _Eastenders_ or something; it won't matter."

"Between you and the Maitlands, _I_ could do with a catch-up on _Eastenders_."

"Right, that's it. I tried to be nice, but you've left me no choice."

"No choice in wha-?!" She gets cut off in her yelp, only just getting her feet off the floor in time to be wheeled out the door. The Doctor gets her into the hall before he lines up, giving the chair little practice shoves without ever letting go of it. "No," she mutters, "No, what are you doing? Doctor, don't!" But with a-one-and-a-two-and-a-three, he shoves off the wall and rides the back of the chair, steering them zooming right around the outside of the quarantine. The observing medics, still hanging about, jump out of the way while Clara screams, and with one more shove off the far corner the Doctor brings them safely back to the door.

Lizzie is in the act of taking away the fire extinguisher. "Some of us are trying to think," she says, but grudgingly smiles as she closes them out.

"And now that _you're_ in a better mood," the Doctor tells Clara, "we've got some thinking to do too."

'Better mood' remains to be seen. 'Looking away in shame and embarrassment', yes. 'Still a tiny bit petrified', yes. "You'll be the death of me."

"Never."

There's a wheelchair sitting folded down the hallway. He fetches it over and plonks himself down. It nearly folds up on him and leaves him on the floor. "You have to lock the frame," Clara says. He knew that. He just chose not to lock the frame. Nothing like a pratfall to bring a sullen companion round. This time he locks the frame before he plonks. Her chair is higher up than his, so he reaches over and finds the lever, sinks her slowly to his level. Giggling, "All better?"

"Much better. But Clara?"

"Yeah?"

"I've got all these problems and mysteries and I need a hand unravelling some of it. Would you do me the great honour of helping talk it all through?"

She makes a big show of thinking about it, like there's a huge decision to be made. Then she puts out her hand and they shake like business partners. "'Course I will."

The Doctor bounds out of his wheelchair, producing his trusty felt tip from inside his jacket. "Mystery number one!" and he draws a big circle on the window around the patient in bed. "Your new boyfriend!"

"…Doctor_._"

"Oh, look, Lizzie's holding his hand. Don't get jealous, she's only reaching for information… Clara? Clara, what's wrong with your face? Your eyes, Clara, they've gone all flame-y. Clara, you haven't blinked in a while, are you alright?"

"I'm thinking of a new use for that fire extinguisher."

He raises his hands, bites down his smile. "No, in all seriousness, finding a man seventy years past his sell-by date perfectly unharmed and un-aged forty feet beneath a Virginia crossroads, that is a mystery, wouldn't you agree?" She nods, conceding. "Now, Lizzie's been able to divine what I already told you about the soul-"

Just to confirm for herself, "The element… Like when we met Jessica at university. His… what'd'you call it… _nihilium stocks_."

"That exactly. He's got next to none left. Enough to live on, which doesn't explain why he's still sleeping or why he's still young…"

"Hold on, how do you know it's enough to live on?"

Because they've seen it before. The incident she mentioned before, at Wise Star, introduced them to one Professor Dooblevay Carling, who had given up his store of self to a creature with no other source of sustenance. He was up and walking around and pretending to teach Peace Studies.

And they encountered it most recently on an English suburban street, chuckling, and telling them it was more than willing to play a game with them.

Clara shudders and looks away. There's been peace, up here in quarantine. Quiet except for the radio and the little chats, getting to know Lizzie. She had almost forgotten about Louis Sieverts. Now it comes back to her in a rush; what it felt like to stand next to him, what he promised if she didn't deliver. The conversation they're actually having vanishes in a sudden flash of fear. "Doctor, what about Angie and Artie?"

The Doctor settles back into his wheelchair. Pulls her head down against his shoulder, stroking her hair. Very gently, "They are in no more danger. You don't need to worry. Louis never wanted them, not really." And now the Doctor begins to lie. He says, "He wanted me. And if I'm here, he'll be staying near here."

It's only a little bit of a lie. Actually, it's not even a lie at all. Louis' after him. Louis will be sticking around this time and place in the hopes of getting him. None of that's a lie. It's only the guilt in his stomach that forces him to admit it's maybe a tiny little bit of a lie and he doesn't like lying to Clara. But she's been so worried, for long, long days. Fear makes time go slowly, and it hurts. It drags you down and exhausts you. He doesn't want to give her any more of that than she already has.

But there's nothing that says the Doctor can't be afraid for her, when he's got good reason. Still, he tells her, right out loud, "You have nothing to be afraid of."

That _is_ a lie. Out-and-out and unequivocal. He thought seeing her smile might ease the telling of it, but it doesn't.

But she'll be safe up here. They're the only ones allowed in. And, after her encounter with the police drone, she won't try to go out and about without him. Clara will be just fine.

Maybe she doesn't want to think about it anymore, or maybe she just gets bored under his arm, but she sticks out her hand palm-up, demands, "Give me the marker." He gladly obliges, and she hops up to their make-shift whiteboard. Starts making bullet points next to the encircled Adam. _2013_, one says. _Soul extracted_, says the next. _Still sleeping/not aged?_

He grins, "I keep forgetting you're a teacher now." It could open up into more friendly teasing, except she ignores him. Makes a new heading, _Louis Sieverts_. The points beneath, _Also soulless, After the Doctor, Bloody Scary_. "I hope you don't write like that in front of the children."

"Quiet down back there. It's your own time you're wasting."

"Yes, Miss. Sorry, Miss."

"Now, what about the next mystery?" The Doctor tips his head, wondering which she means. Clara stretches up and draws a sizeable arrow over Lizzie's bowed, thinking head. "Lizzie. She says she's a witch."

"She can call it what she wants."

"And that you rescued her from burning at the stake."

"True."

"Whilst singing songs from musicals, making bets for Jammie Dodgers with Jessica, who cut her down with a blade made of Tirinnanoc ash grown organically from the anterior of the lateral portion of the left radius. These are her words, not mine. I would have said 'girl shot a sword out of her arm'. Now, how does a sixteenth-century witch know about the lateral portion of the radius, and all the words to _Single Ladies_?"

"She knows lots of things. I'm sorry, though. I can't sit here and tell you all about what she really is and where that knowledge comes from." Clara's face clouds over. Getting worried again, and he wanted to stop that, so he panics, "Oh, no, nothing nasty. But I haven't sat down with _Lizzie_ and talked about all that yet. We've had conversations before about telling what you know about people."

Being really rather rude for a teacher, she rolls her eyes, "Well, _when_ were you thinking of doing that?"

"I'm thinking the opportune moment is probably going to offer itself. She'll do something wonderful and have most of it figured out and I'll just have to fill in the blanks."

"What she's already doing isn't wonderful?"

"Oh yes! Matter of fact, it's _very_ wonderful. What you're doing right now, with the breathing and the thinking and the continuing heartbeat and the white blood cells and the digestive system and the talking and sitting upright and all of these at once, that's wonderful. But there'll be even more wonderful yet to come."

She sits back down on her chair, takes herself for a little spin while she says, "I'd like to go on record as saying you're probably making a mess of that."

"Probably."

"Why did you want to meet her in the first place?"

"She has to explore in order to fulfil her potential. Has to keep discovering." That's not a lie, not in the slightest. It's just not really the answer to her question. The answer to her question would have been, 'I didn't know what to get Jessica as a graduation present and I thought it would be nice if someone could tell her her real name and birthday and where she's from and if she has any family'. That's private. He doesn't feel so awful about keeping that from her.

There's a moment of content silence. "Any other business?" Clara sighs.

He could tell her about Toffee Lees. He could tell her he went outside and met a creature dressed up as her, who didn't suit her pretty cheekbones as well as she does, and who was smoking too. Could tell her that Louis Sieverts has an ally, and one who can blur the lines between perception and reality so effectively that the world in which she stands is essentially her own creation. But how can he? How can he have sat her and tried so hard to keep her from worrying, only to give her that right here at the end?

No. They'll talk about Toffee when he's got more to tell. When Jessica returns from her top secret mission, they'll talk about Mrs Toffee Lees. …He still can't believe he missed that.

"No other business. Thank you very much for making the notes. This 'teaching' thing could be very useful, y'know."

"That reminds me. I have a stack of practice papers to mark, so when you bring me back you couldn't make it the night before, could you?"

Of course he could. How could he refuse her?

The Doctor wheels himself over to the door. Shoves it open and puts the fire extinguisher back where he wants it. Then he wheels back and gets Clara's chair between his knees, pushing her ahead of him and back into place by the bed. "You stay there, keep Adam company. Now, Lizzie and I are going to be leaving the two of you alone. So try and be a lady, won't you? At least until Jessica gets back, then she can keep an eye on you."

She watches him get up, thoroughly unamused, and grumbles, "So where are you and Lizzie going, then?"

Lizzie lifts her head to listen; she too would like to know where her and the Doctor are going. She too stares blankly at him when he proudly declares, "The Black Market!"

When she sees the same look on Lizzie's face, Clara says, "The black market's not an actual place, Doctor. It's just a term."

"I'm pretty sure it's a place too."

"I'm pretty sure it's not."

"Lizzie, help me out here."

The witch shrugs, tugs on her delightful hair again (he really can't stop looking at it, and there's something odd about this, but it's not odd enough to investigate just yet), "I suppose I could take you to one of the _auctions_."

"Ha!"

"But it's hardly advisable. They know what they're looking for, and they are looking for you."

He waves her off, "Oh, I'll disguise myself."

Clara sits back hard in her chair, plants both feet firmly on the floor, "Oh God. You go. You're welcome to him, Lizzie. I'll stay here. I've seen his disguises. I'm not going _anywhere_ with him in disguise again. I'll stay here, wait for Jessica, that's an excellent idea."

The Doctor tries not to glow with pride; now she thinks it was her own idea to stay locked safely in the hospital. But he can't resist one last jab from the doorway, as he pulls away the fire extinguisher, "There's a book in your boyfriend's bag if you get bored." The soundproof door swings too and he doesn't hear her most unladylike response.


	14. Incognito

Lizzie walks ahead of him into the Tardis. Lucky thing he left the door unlocked, because she breezes happily past, quite as though she does this every day in life. She's adjusting, and it charms his heart to think she that when she first saw it, she compared it to a ship, which flew like a bird, and was too enamoured of this even to notice that it was larger within.

_Transdimensional engineering_, she'd say today, and probably think nothing of it.

He is a little _less_ charmed when she takes herself direct to the navigational panel and starts programming their destination without so much as a by-your-leave. He's rather afraid he might be looking rather sour by the time she notices. He might, in fact, be leaning on the console's edge, arms folded, eyes roving the high vaults of the ceiling as if he might just take off and leave her to it, if she feels that way. "Well," she tells him, "_you _don't know where we're going."

"No. And I ran about taking companions on magical mystery tours without a word of explanation I wouldn't last very long. Martha alone would have done me in five times over…"

"Oh, look, if I've hurt your feelings-"

"No, no. I have no Hurt Feelings Department. I'm an emotional rhinoceros, Elizabeth."

"Now, that can't possibly be true." First he takes the insult quietly. Then recognizes it as a compliment and at least softens the stiffness in his shoulders. Then, slowly, he realizes it's neither of these things and whips round, flapping his hands at phantom words without ever actually managing to catch and use them. There's a flash of danger through Lizzie, and she looks up smiling, "C'mon, Doctor. Won't it be nice not having to do the job of six pilots? I can do this; cut it down to three."

The Doctor moves, though without taking his eyes off her, to the other side of the console. This proves rather difficult with the time rotor between them. He leans until her image in the glass becomes to distorted, then darts his head to the other side. Her hands move confidently over the controls. More to the point, her face glows; she's enjoying this. Then she takes the handbrake off.

"Now where would you have learned that?"

She lifts her eyes to him. Still able to operate the temporal stabilizers for a safe and steady (non-spinning) flight down the vortex despite her confusion. "Well, where would I have learned anything? You seem to know more about it than me."

"In all of history there aren't an awful lot of people left who can fly a Tardis. Even fewer could fly _my_ Tardis who, while she is undoubtedly the very _best_ Tardis ever grown, can be a bit temperamental and has a couple of parts I can't get that need replacing."

"I know it the same way I know the rest," she shrugs. Ducks behind the rotor and mutters, "Someday you'll explain it to me."

"Do me a favour," he mutters back, swinging around on the monitor to meet her close, "Be six pilots while I go and disguise myself."

* * *

Clara reads aloud to Adam from a perfectly preserved 2012 edition of _A Tale Of Two Cities_, with a colour variation on the cover and a misprint on pages 42 and 234, not knowing that it's worth a small fortune in the year she's sitting in. "_A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other-_" Her head snaps up with the door opens. She was three chapters in and absorbed, and anyway, who could be coming to see them so soon?

But it's only Jessica. Edging round the door as quietly as she can in her heavy boots. Clara feels the beginnings of the old blush creeping up in her cheeks, but Jessica seems to have forgotten the joke. "Much sorry, Claraperson," she whispers. "Not to be interrupts her."

"I'm not sure it's making any difference anyway." She starts to close the book. Jessica rushes suddenly across the room and stretches out, her flat palm holding it open.

"No! Does!" This was too fast, too loud and earnest. She clears her throat and draws away, disappearing in behind her hair. Hurrying, she grabs the Doctor's wheelchair across and parks down by Clara's side. "Much sorry. Only meaning that, him am having been deep inside cold ground places all alone for much many years. Is being much nice for him to hear that her am paying attention. Not alone."

Something is just a little bit off. Clara holds the page, certainly. What Jessica just said makes sense, after all. But it's something about the way she said it. Clara can't quite put her finger on it. She has turned back, and turned her eyes down to the book, before it strikes her. "Aha!" and she points an excited, shaking finger.

Jessica stiffens, freezes. Rolls the wheelchair back to where she can get up and run from the room in a straight line.

"Sorry, maybe that was a bit dramatic, but… But you said '_alone_'."

Jessica shrugs, "Him _was_ being."

"But you said _alone_."

"What else would be saying?"

"You say 'alonely'. That's the first time I've heard you get it right."

"Oh. Well. Learns it." Jessica wheels herself back over. "Not to be scares her like that, Claraperson. Reads now."

"Yeah, okay." Clara lifts the book up again, propping it on the edge of the bed. And she doesn't feel _anything_ at all when Jessica reaches out and weaves her fingers with Adam's, because she puts her head on Clara's shoulder too. "_A solemn consideration_," she continues, "_when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret_; _that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!_"

* * *

"Doctor!" Lizzie shouts. "Landing is much more difficult in practice than in theory!"

"Coming, coming!"

Following the sound of his face she cranes to see him. A natural reaction, if pointless; it won't make him come any faster. The Doctor, too, is trying to quiet an enormous pair of military surplus boots. He is also not used to dragging a weighty, flicking tail full of animatronics and having to carry twenty-something kilos of armour, all whilst sweating under a layer of deep purple greasepaint. Lizzie has the Tardis _most_ of the way into a safe landing by the time he gets there to finish it.

"You're not serious."

"No, Sirius is a star. _I_ am Kalakth'ktar, a member of the Lembrustra warrior classes, as you can clearly see by the scarification amongst the scales of my crown and temples." Yes, his skullcap really is a very interesting piece of prosthesis. Try as she might, whatever her rapidly-expanding intelligence, Lizzie cannot fathom how it manages to contain his hair. He stands back, arms open to give her the full effect, twirls round with an open mouthed grin and his tail twitching. "What do you think?"

"I think if you'd stop smiling, speaking English and looking like you're having such a very good time, it might work a lot better."

One finger on his nose, one pointing at her, "_Right_. Now, where are we parked?"

"Well, given that your transportation is as recognizable as you, she would appear to have found herself an empty supply closet that just fits her."

The Doctor tries to pull up his sleeves. Finding only armour he lets it rattle back into place and rushes to the monitor. "Now, old girl, if _I_ can get all dolled up to go out, the least you can do is put a bit of slap on. Outside! Now. And dress yourself."

"Your cloaking device?" Lizzie says. "You haven't thought that one through, have you?"

"What, you mean that stepping out of an invisible box is just as suspicious as arriving in a Tardis?"

"Quite."

"That's why I'm not using the cloaking device." There is the brief judder of repositioning. "Come outside and I'll show you!" He gets her by the back of the neck, moving her ahead of him to the door with a soft impression of a motor engine. Right at the threshold, Lizzie digs in her heels to stop. She turns, winds back her hand, and slaps him, hard.

Now the look on his face is more appropriate to a Lembrustra warrior.

There's also purple make-up on her hand, and she wipes it disdainfully on a coat that hangs on the handstand. "Oi!" he cries. Very much more like a Lembrustra warrior.

Job done, Lizzie steps out ahead of him. Turns with real interest to see what the Tardis has disguised herself as. "Oh yes," she sighs, at the bright red British Telecom phone box, "_very_ discreet."

* * *

Clara has been reading on for some time now. She'd almost started to think Jessica had fallen asleep.

Between chapters, she looks up, giving her eyes a break from the page. Jessica's fine, pale fingers aren't just wound in Adam's anymore, but delicately stroking the knuckles.

Not jealous, and not thinking at all of Jessica as some sort of rival, Clara turns her chair just a little. And now that she looks, there's a slightly damp patch on the sleeve of her cardigan. When she brushes at it, Jessica sits abruptly straight. She lets go of Adam's hand and turns her face away. She tries to hide but Clara sees the gleam on her cheeks. "Are you alright?"

She opens her mouth to answer, but it's just a wet choke. Jessica just nods.

"Jessica, you're crying."

"Story. Story am being much sad."

"Well, I'll stop then."

"No! Him am having wanted for reading it and her am to keep readings it for him." Jessica climbs out of the wheelchair and crosses the room to the box of sterile tissues to dry her face. She stops a single sob with the side of her hand, breathes deep to steady herself.

But Clara's not quite ready to let it go, or to let Jessica go. The girl looks like she needs a hug, and Clara's very good at those. "C'mere," she murmurs. Jessica flinches, but it's not long before she gives up. "Did something happen when you were out? Where did the Doctor send you?"

"Not anything happens, Claraperson."

"Where did you go?"

"Not anywhere, not finds, not does right. Claraperson please keeps reading for Henry; him am needing friend and not having any. Not having best friend because is having left him."

"Adam."

"…What says, Claraperson?"

"In fact, before you left, you were saying 'SleepyAdam'. And you just said Henry. And 'left' is past tense, isn't it?"

"Henry like in story, Claraperson."

"There's no Henry, I'm the one reading."

"Later. Reads it before."

"Doubtful. I've never heard you use the past tense properly before, Jessica."

Now Jessica straightens herself. She grabs back all this unruly hair, wondering how she can ever stand it, shoving it over her shoulders. She drags the last tears from her face, clears the thickness from her throat. Looking Clara dead in the eye, "Aren't you tired?"

Clara finds herself sinking back onto her seat, nodding softly. "Little bit."

"No, the wheelchair. It's got arms, you'll be more comfortable."

"You're sure you don't mind?"

"Oh, be my guest, Miss Oswald."

"Thanks, Jessica." Clara settles herself, eyes closed, slipping happily towards the dark of sleep. "This'll be nice. Just rest my eyes."

"Yeah." _Jessica_ gets the office chair. Lifts it up a bit and puts it behind the wheelchair. Her hands come to rest on top of Clara's head, stroking over and over down through her hair. Very relaxing. She'll like that. "Maybe, while you snooze, you could forget all these little mistakes I've been making. If you were feeling like a really nice person, which I know you are, you could tell me how to correct them. Talk me through my Jessica impression. I won't forget it, Miss Oswald."

Mumbling up out of her dreams, "…I told you, didn't I, about the past tense thing?"


	15. Going Going

"But she _doesn't_ look like a Tardis."

"A little louder, Doctor. You're forgetting those people who didn't hear the first twelve times you made this argument."

He bridles. There is just the _ghost_ of a pout beginning to form on his face, before he remembers who he's supposed to be and turns it into a sneer. "You know, Elizabeth, you're getting awfully wry, as you get used to the world. Don't get me wrong, I'm _not at all_ saying that I preferred when you were too terrified to cope and spoke nicely to me-"

"Good thing you're not at all saying that."

"-only if you're going to tell _me_ off for giving the game away you might do well to remember that my name is Kalakth'ktar. By rights, if I were _truly_ remaining in character, I ought to snatch out an eye for such a slight as getting that wrong."

"If you were _truly_ remaining in character, you'd remember that your race is famed for its stoic silence in any multi-species situation." Lizzie smiles to herself, allowing just a _touch_ of pride. After all, there's no one here to tell her it's a deadly sin and try and light her up. She's been drawing down her knowledge of the Lembrustra warriors since his appearance first triggered her memory. She knows, for instance, that the armour he's wearing is antiquated in this year. He'll be laughed at, should he run across any of his supposed kin.

She's been drawing down her knowledge of all these other races she can see around her. It hasn't proved _overly_ helpful. As a matter of fact, all it has really taught her is that all of these specimens represent the very lowest of the low, whatever species they hail from. There's a seediness to them, a sense, from their very presence, that these are mean, life-sucking things. No mercy, no compassion. Selfish. But they are _wealthy_, oh yes, whether they are buyer or seller, and have dressed themselves accordingly.

A Silurian who has had her gold filigree bodice moulded to her body this morning and will have to be cut out of it tonight shoves self-importantly by. Lizzie, in her Earth cottons, is _almost_ inclined to fade to one side in the face of such finery. She's not sure what dark instinct it is that lifts the bile to the back of her throat, makes her rear up and snap, "Watch your step." Can't pinpoint it, but she sounds like a queen. For all of a millisecond, she gets to be impressed with herself.

Then then dark-scaled lizard turns, eyes blazing. But she sees the growling Lembrustra that steps in front of this insolent slip, and decides to let it go.

"Low profile, Lizzie?"

"I… I don't know what came over me."

There's a Kantari prison warden approaching from behind. Here to sell, judging by the case in his hands. The Doctor moves to Lizzie's shoulder, guarding her. Just so she won't go snapping at anybody bigger than him.

The entire crowd is moving as one toward a large, grey stone building. It is not elaborate, or attractive. It looks, to all intents and purposes, like a warehouse which has had the front wall knocked out, leaving it open to accommodate the enormous gathering. When it becomes difficult to move, the Doctor makes full use of his articulated armour. It functions, essentially, as an exoskeleton, allowing him to pick Lizzie up and set her on his shoulder. Her reaction might have been less conspicuous, of course, had he told her his intentions before he did it. Still, damage is done now, she's had her little yelp and is gripping the back of his neckpiece like death. The crowd parts for a Lembrustra and they move to the front. There's a sort of stage here, with a plinth for the auctioneer. Behind that, attendants are filling a wall, shelf-after-shelf-after-shelf, with plain black jars.

Lizzie sees them and understands. "Nihilium containers. Airtight so that the element doesn't need to be compressed into a solid, keeps it pure. Black to keep out light. That's an old habit. They proved centuries ago that light has no effect. Nihilium is too fine."

"Opens up the whole game to fraud, I should imagine."

"No. That's what the attendants are for. Look at the machines they're carrying. Handheld scanners. Canisters are checked when they're accepted, and spot-checked periodically even as the auction goes on." Lizzie physically _feels_ her mind settle, and knows there's nothing more to learn about the processes in front of her. Nothing useful. Now she can concern herself with more _immediate_ matters. "Kalakth'ktar," she murmurs, "Don't look now, but down by your knees is a man who doesn't belong here."

Not quite by his knees; she's just higher up and that's how it looks to her. The elderly gentleman comes up to about waist-height. He has both hands and his chin hanging on the edge of the raised platform, though if the hunch in his back wasn't so severe he might be almost stately. He's haggard and sad, and clutches his coat so tightly around him that they know, just looking, that his life's savings are in some inner pocket.

Lizzie pats the Doctor's scaly prosthetic scalp and is promptly swung to the ground. Human, she reads swiftly, in excess of ninety years of age, a widower. She can also tell he has a son, who's in trouble, because he's clutching a photograph of a much younger man against his lapel.

"Get away," he spits. "You think I don't know a thief when she gets close?"

"I just wanted to ask if you wanted my bodyguard to stand behind you."

Kalakth'ktar of the Lembrustra warrior classes gives a decidedly unwarriorlike roll of the eyes, "_Assistant, co-pilot, bodyguard_… I'm bloody important, you know, there's a reason I'm dressed up." Luckily he's above them, and Lizzie misses all of this hissing. She guides the old man along the edge of the platform until the bulk of the Doctor's armour protects him.

"You don't look like one of this lot," Lizzie says kindly, careful to keep her thieving hands out of the way.

The old man starts to warm, "Neither do you, missy."

"Well, we're here on a… research trip. You?"

He gets cagey. Telling himself to say nothing. But she's sympathetic, anxious, and that's what he needs. He's been alone in this, whatever's happening to him. Lizzie makes it okay to speak out. "My boy," he says. "Got himself in some trouble. And now he's in one of them jars up there. Too late even for saving him. But I want back the last parts. That ain't so bad, is it?"

Lizzie struggles for the words. Puts out one hand to him. And she's just thought of what she ought to say when a purple-tinted tear falls from the great height and makes her snap to attention. She shoves the Doctor in the chest. "Kalakth'ktar, your make-up is running."

Then, before she can address the mourning father again, a hush falls over the crowd. Footsteps start across the stage and the gavel is thumped down a few times to bring silence.

The Auctioneer is a creature with glittering, jet-black skin, with gleaming black eyes, and long, spidery limbs that clack at their multiple joints wherever it moves. "Yumtang," Lizzie recites to herself. "Nihilium feeders. Just a few years from now the humans force them to virtual extinction when one of their colonies destroys the homeworld."

"I know," the Doctor tells her, "I've had dealings with the 'Virtual' part."

He begins, offering up the souls of 'lesser' races, or those with low nihilium stocks. Sontarans, Judoon, Ood; anything with a hive mind or some artificial military element, these never come off well. But the excitement is building, and the mutter through the crowd is that there is a rich crop of humans today, and one particular gem to fight over.

It's this last rumour that starts to make Lizzie uncomfortable. "Really," she asks him, "What are we doing here?"

"Like you said, research trip. Lizzie, I want you to look around. Read for me. Processes of extraction and restoration. Especially restoration. This is the place to find them and I need all the information I can get."

She puts her hands up on his shoulder and he swings her back up. With a better vantage point now, she cranes, looking into the crowd, into the various machines and cases. She sees the Kantari again, and learns quickly that unruly prisoners are settled down by partially removing their souls. A spiritual and metaphysical lobotomy. But that involves huge machines, and there has been no effort yet at restoration. Useless to her.

The old man is no help. He said, of course, that there's no hope for his son _now_. Which means there _was_, but the time is gone. Still, that tells her nothing about how to actually _perform_ the task.

With a sigh, rethinking, Lizzie looks up into the ceiling. Something moves, just in the corner of her eye, and she rolls them sideways.

The attendants. They're in the wings at the side of the stage, occasionally popping out for the spotchecks. But there is one who holds a different machine to the rest. It's bigger, more mechanical. It has a compartment which, when Lizzie looks at it, reveals itself to be more powerful than its tininess suggests. That's where the nihilium gathers. Whether it's going out or going in, that's where you get the gold-dust. The rest is a matter of programming.

Trying for his attention, she tugs the Doctor's ear. It's only when he doesn't respond that she realizes; the human portion of the auction has begun.

The old man is bidding, and the Doctor's eyes are fixed on him.

The gnarled, withered hand is stuck resolutely in the air. Every nod of acceptance brings his chin clunking against the wooden boards, but this doesn't matter to him.

Then comes the almost-inevitable moment. He has to stop nodding. He has to take his hand back down. There's not enough in the pockets of his coat to cover the prices. He's been outbid.

The Doctor wiggles his arm, shaking Lizzie almost off his shoulder. "Put your hand up!" he hisses urgently.

"Why?"

"Because I'm just the bodyguard, remember?"

She does as she's told, and sees the auctioneer point to her while his mouth rattles words strung too tightly together. "I'm _bidding_," she breathes, stunned.

"And you're going to _keep_ bidding, Lizzie."

"Have you _heard_ these numbers? The ones I can pick out, I mean, have you _heard_?! Do you honestly have this sort of currency?"

"Oh, somewhere, probably, down in the Tardis, there's a vault or there's… Look, just keep your hand up. It's only a minor human, they'll back off soon enough."

Lizzie does what he asks. Though really, it doesn't sound like they're backing off, and the numbers only get bigger. Eventually, though, the chatter ends. She all but _swoons_, she's so relieved, and drapes limply over the top of her bodyguard's head. "Get up," he says. "There's no exoskeleton up there, you're heavy."

"No!" she snaps at his ear. "How _dare_ you put me in that position?"

"It's the position you're in _now_ that's breaking my neck!"

One of the attendants is edging along to them. The Doctor sets her down to accept a token from him. But it seems she's expected to pay _now_, or at least commit to it; the attendant wants her to give him her arm. The Doctor puts her out of the way and offers his own. The same machine that scans the jars is pushed against him, and a set of tiny needles jabs hard through the skin.

"Oh," he mutters, and Lizzie says precisely the same thing at the same moment, "Genetic bank account coding." She looks up nodding and he nods back, "That's the era we're in, then. Lizzie?"

"Yes?"

"Give that token to the gentleman. Accept any gratitude as swiftly as possible. And then we might have to do a little bit of running."

"Why?"

"Because that gentleman just took gene material from me and pretty soon people are going to know I'm not Kalakth'ktar."

"Ah." She crouches swiftly to the elderly gentleman. There are tears in his eyes and he claps his hands over hers until it takes the Doctor's exoskeleton starting to pull her along to extract her. "There's a side exit," she tells him on instinct, "It gives us a better chance of reaching the Tardis before anybody can reach us, or figure out what the phone booth's doing here and head us off."

"And yet you sound like there's a downside, Lizzie?"

"Side of the stage, out through the wing."

He looks at it. Awfully public, awfully exposed. "_Yeah_, we'll be fine, c'mon." He picks her up, puts on his best warrior face, and dares anybody to question him as they slip out.

But there in the shadows, the next offering is receiving its final check. It's just his ill-luck that he happens to look over the attendant's shoulder, and see the screen of his little reader. It is telling him there is definitely still a soul in the jar.

It is telling him it is still definitely the soul of one Clara Oswin Oswald, captured in 2086, being sold off by Louis Sieverts.

It is _not_ telling him that a purple-painted gentleman in exoskeleton armour is about to bash him (apologetically, it has to be said) on the head and grab the jar away.

Lizzie tries to tell him about the reader. It's important. While they're stealing anyway, they might as well steal that. But they seem to have moved on to the running part of the plan, and from the sound of the shouting and alarms behind them, maybe that's for the best.


	16. Your Enemies, Closer

The Doctor isn't responding. He's staring at the black jar in his hands, that looks so much like an urn for ashes, and that is frankly all he's doing. Now that they are safely off the earth and out of the era where they so swiftly became wanted, Lizzie rounds the console and shoves him, hard, at the shoulder. All he does, the only explanation he's got, is to lift up the urn with a whirr from his enhanced armour and whisper at her, "_Clara_."

"We'll see."

"We _did_ see, Elizabeth, it was on the little screen. And all those people standing about, talking about what a good crowd was in, what an excellent prize was up for auction later on, and…"

"We _saw_ that the contents of that jar were gathered in 2086. We don't know if they've been gathered _yet_, as of when we left. So snap out of it, or I will quite readily snap you myself." About four seconds after the words leave her, Lizzie hears them. Maybe it's the echo out of the far recesses of the console room. Maybe she's just coming to her senses. It's the same way she spoke to that lowlife new money lizard at the auction house, and Lizzie is thoroughly baffled to hear it coming from _her_.

She has always lived modestly, and quietly. Keep your head down and try not to get yourself burned. Now she speaks like a noble, like on born noble, like one who has had armies at her 'hest and known them to obey.

Just a flash of a smile, and the Doctor bounds back to his feet. "Of course. Quite right too, thank you, Lizzie. He lifts the jar up on one palm, "I hold in my hand a brutal future. But that's the point, isn't it? It's in my hands. It's mine to control. Lizzie, do you want to see a magic trick?"

Something of a non-sequitur, but at least he's active. "Do you think your magic is better than mine?"

"You're not magic at all. You are a phenomena that people do not understand. That's the very definition of witchcraft. This, sadly, this is magic like ladies-and-gentlemen-nothing-up-my-sleeve-sawing-a-rabbit-in-half sort of magic. But no less impressive for that. Behold!" and with his heel he kicks a panel at the base of the console, popping it open. Within is a decidedly bland mess of cable and shadow, "A perfectly ordinary service compartment, one might think but no! No, it's a magical vanishing box!" He swings down, and with great ceremony, much flashy wiggling of fingers, places Clara's jar into this unprepossessing home, and slams the door again. "Now, when I open that door again, there will be _nothing_ there. The future that bore the jar will have been unwritten, and the jar itself ceased to exist!"

Then he stands, looking glittery and proud of himself.

Lizzie counts to five, then nods toward the hatch. "So? Can we open it?"

Rolling his eyes, "_No_. You have to give the magic a chance to _work_, obviously." The Tardis judders, and they rush back to their positions for landing. "But don't you fear, Elizabeth, not one bit. I'll pull it off. Had I never performed such magic before in _all_ my many days, and I have, including on a Las Vegas stage, thank you very much, I'd pull this one off."

"Oh, I don't need any special power to tell me that."

"Nevertheless, Lizzie, you reach and see. You ask all your knowledge, Will the Doctor allow this heinous thing to pass? You ask and you see what sort of answers you get."

There has been some small adjustment to the landing coordinates. Rather than land back at the crater of the tunnel collapse, they have chosen a more direct approach, and the Tardis fits herself neatly into the corner of the corridor around the quarantine. Sadly this means no more round-the-world trips on the office chair, but the Doctor needs to be close. He comes out still ranting, until Lizzie puts her hand on his arm. "You really must tell me that Vegas story sometime."

But even as she speaks, his eyes drift over her shoulder, seeking out Clara. She is still in the chair where he left her, slumped low, with her chin against her chest. Those eyes flare with panic and the Doctor races to the door, pulls it shuddering off its seals calling, "Clara! Oh, no, oh, _Clara_!"

And then a yelp, as he is barrelled off his feet by Jessica, pinned to the floor with one of her wooden stakes tickling beneath his chin. "Who am being?!" the little warrior demands. "What for is wanting Claraperson?! Talks now!"

"Jessica, what are you doing, it's m… I'm still purple, aren't I?" His animatronic tail twitches beneath him and confirms yes, yes, he's still purple. Yes he's still got a tail, and a scaly head, and a powerful outer shell. Remembering this last, he is able to put it to use, climbing up from the floor and swinging her up with him in his arms.

Sadly, the stake stays right where it is, and with Jessica struggling to free herself it does a lot of scratching and waggling. "No. Now _knows_ is not being Doctor. Doctor am being weak, noodly man, and not lifting heavy wood-skellington Jessica."

"…_Noodly_? I've won wars, y'know."

It's how hurt he sounds. That's what makes her eye him, allowing herself to be set back on her feet, snapping off the stake. "If being Doctor, why is comes in all-shouts and not caring that Clara am being sleeps now?"

"Sleeping! Sleeping, she's asleep, because she's been here for days, because it was quiet, oh, happy day, Clara's asleep…"

"What else would be being with snores like that?"

Oh, his delightful, snuffling, snoring girl! His hearts leap all at once, and he's so caught up in the moment that Jessica can only watch, confused. She looks to Lizzie for an explanation, but Lizzie slips past, checking Adam's vital signs, pretends she doesn't see.

Jessica gives up. Shakes her head and moves on, "Doctor is having had any much learnings, at soul auctions?"

"…Let's wait until Clara wakes up, hm? No sense in explaining it twice." No sense in explaining it at all, if he can possibly get away with it. At any rate, he wants to sit down.

Lizzie, since there's nothing she can do here, goes to find the hospital canteen. Clara sleeps on. The Doctor rests in the comfort of a soft visitor's chair that had been shoved into the corner by the door, with Jessica curled up at his feet. It's an old, familiar comfort. He spends some time untangling one hank of her hair from the rest, as gently and gingerly as he can, and proceeds then to braid it into something he can wrap around her head. They've done this dozens of times. She hardly seems to notice it anymore. In the meantime, she struggles with Dickens, picking up where Clara left off. Word by word, she picks her way across the page with a fingertip. Occasionally (though the occasions are many), she lifts up the book to his eye-level, finger still pointing, and he'll help out;

"_Deceiver_. It's another word for liar."

"_Abode_. It's another word for house."

"_Bluetit_. That's a sort of bird."

"Much thanks," she'll say, and go back to her little battle.

That's what puts a new conversation into his head. "When Elizabeth gets back-" he begins.

"Hopes is being soontimes; am having much rumbly-belly."

"-That's as may be, but when she gets back… I was thinking maybe you would let her read you. You know, like she did for Adam? It's very possible that Lizzie will have access to information you might like to know."

Her hair is starting to feel warm from wrapping around his fingers. Starting to feel alive and bright. She had little blue streaks put in while she was studying, and they have a spark, like electricity. Very warm. Very soft…

"Not-please, thanking very much."

"Whyever not? I thought that would be something you'd like. Something you'd want?"

"Oh, oh yes. Wants. Is being very-like-almost the thing her am most wanting in all of oony-verse, Doctor. But maybe to be waiting until badpersons Lewwy and Missustoffee are having been gone, right-yes? Not to be thinking about _Jessica_ now."

_What a sweet thing to say_, he thinks. His thoughts are warm now too. His thoughts are soft. Everything has the colour and velvet of the clouds on a long summer sunset, that can be pink and gold and turquoise and navy blue and red and so very soft, so sweet. Marshmallows… Marshmallows are soft and sweet, and so are the Doctor's thoughts. One braid mindlessly abandoned, he separates another strand and begins the same treatment. It treats him too, treats him to a feeling of overwhelming happiness, spreading from his fingertips up toward his hearts like pins and needles.

"Doctor?" Jessica says, so very gently. He taught her to speak, you know. Him and the Ponds, and there are occasional Scottish catches in her vowels and twangs of brave, distinguished sarcasm. "Doctor? Not him to be being sleeps too?"

"No, no. I'm awake. Is it another word? Give me the book, I'll read to you."

"Not to be does, Doctor. Keeps playing with hair, please. But her am wanting to asks… what am being _him_ biggest wish, in all of oony-verse?"

That is a very big question. That's a question out of a thousand years and all of space. And the Doctor, while he would consider himself to be very content and to be happiest when dwelling within the current and perpetual moment, has a great many wishes. You rack them up. Even if you don't mean to. _Well_, you tell yourself, _these things happen, all mortal life must pass_, but that doesn't stop you wishing. Logic can't touch wishes. You tell yourself, _Hindsight is a wonderful thing, it doesn't do to dwell on one's mistakes_, but that does not keep the dreams away. You might be smart enough not to allow the what-ifs and if-onlys to hold any sway over you, you might not even let yourself think them, but they are there. You wouldn't have to hold them off if they weren't there.

Oh, there are a great many wishes he could choose from.

But his biggest wish? In all of oony-verse?

He opens his mouth, and then closes it again. How could he possibly admit a thing like that? Not to Jessica. She's still got so much to learn, so much living to catch up on. How can he tell her about all the inevitable pain ahead?

"Doctor?"

"Shh, love."

A little twist of blue clings to his knuckle and he curls it over and over. It seems almost to glow, to be giving the heat to _him_ and not the other way round. The happy tingle is making its way up the sides of his neck like a blush, tickling a nerve behind his ear until he laughs. "Doctor can whisper to her if is being better?"

She hops up onto her knees, craning her pretty head to listen more effectively. How tempting! What a delicate little shell is offered to him, just to listen. It would be like telling the sea, or writing down a message to give to the wind. It would be so very easy. And a weight off his chest too. Just the simple act of having told someone…

"And you won't think any less of me, Jessica?"

"Absylutely never-not, Doctor."

His delightful girl… He leans down, close, and closer again…

Then only just gets his face out of the way as Lizzie shoves her shoulder to the door. She's got a tray in her hands, comes in backward. The Doctor gets clear, but Jessica isn't so lucky. She's sent sprawling, tangled hair flying, and lies motionless for a second on the tiles. In seconds, the tray has been put to the side and Lizzie is on her knees at her side, apologizing, one word tripping over the next. She is gathering back hair and picking up Jessica's head to examine for bumps and…

And then she stops. Lets go. Gets up from her knees and takes a step back.

"Doctor, did you tell her anything? Did you agree to anything, ask for anything? Tell me now, did you?"

Holding her aching skull, Jessica sits up sighing. Folds her legs and mumbles, "Ow. Goddamn it, I never get to leave you without a headache, do I?"

There is no Scottish hiss or dry British humour anymore. Actually, her voice is taking on a Southern twang. The pins and needles drain out of the Doctor's skin. Everything is suddenly very cold.

"Answer me!" Lizzie bellows at him.

"No! No, I told her nothing."

All the shouting is getting to _Jessica_. The parts of her hair which should be blue gutter like candles and turn red, and the shape of her face loses some of its roundness. The Doctor discovers he doesn't like his little friend when she suddenly develops cheekbones. It's too grown up and far too quickly.

She mutters darkly, "He got _damn_ close to telling me something, thank you, Lizzie…"

The Doctor begins to sit straight, drawing himself slowly out of the lull. "What were you told," and this is spoken with all the restraint and rage he can manage, "about imitating my friends, Mrs Lees?" But he doesn't sound scary enough. His gaze keeps flicking up over her head.

Lees' laugh is nasty, all the nastier coming from the crumbling façade of Jessica, "Clara's fine. Told you, she's sleeping. Ain't no harm to come to her yet."

"Reveal yourself, please."

She tosses her hair red again, blinks her eyes into their proper shape. The roll of her shoulders reveals them bare and white, and echoes down her body to show her in a beaded ice-blue gown. She looks down at it and winces, "Yeah, don't even ask about that…" Getting to her feet is made all the more difficult by the matching shoes. There's a glance, just a flutter of a glance, back at Adam as she hauls herself up on the bed frame. Reaching into thin air, she produces a white fur stole and flings it around her shoulders. "I'm gonna go," she sighs. Then, biting off every word like a bullet, "I won't forget this, witch… But I'm gonna go and leave you good folk in peace. Win some, lose some, right?"

As she reaches for the door, Lizzie grabs for her.

Toffee's arm quite simply vanishes, leaving her an incomplete mannequin, until she's out of danger. When it reappears, it has found a new diamond bracelet.

But she's so busy avoiding the one of them that she misses the Doctor. The door slams hard when he throws himself out of his chair and pins her to it. "Where's Jessica? What have you done with her?"

"Lord, Doctor, don't you know a _thing_ about espionage? You sent a spy, and she got caught, and I came back to see you instead."

"And now _you're_ caught."

"Not quite."

Her arm disappears again first. Then a leg, then an ear. Piece by piece, and giggling about it, she disappears from beneath his weight, until all that's left are her shoes, side by side in front of his.

He tries to kick them, and they wisp away as smoke.


End file.
